


The Hell Charger

by tisfan



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Powers, Animal Abuse, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Gambling, Horse Racing, Horseback Riding, Medical Conditions, Minor Leo Fitz/Jemma Simmons, Minor Phil Coulson/Melinda May, Murder, Murder Mystery, Past Skye | Daisy Johnson/Grant Ward - Freeform, Phil Coulson & Melinda May are Skye's Parents, Physical Abuse
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-02
Updated: 2019-08-02
Packaged: 2019-08-11 12:33:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 14
Words: 23,236
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16475645
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tisfan/pseuds/tisfan
Summary: Daisy Johnson is an office assistant at Zabo Stables. Adopted by Coulson and May, she has had a tough life, dealing with with brittle bone syndrome and never feeling like she belongs. Even her love life has been horrible; threatened and abused by her ex-boyfriend, Grant Ward. Recently, she got a break and was employed by Calvin Zabo.Robbie Reyes has been riding horses his whole life. Unfortunately, Robbie's uncle Eli Morrow, is a guy with a gambling problem. Owing a ton of money, the Reyes family has been working to pay off the debt for several years. About six months ago, Robbie’s younger brother was in a terrible accident, resulting in a broken spine and spending the rest of his life in a wheelchair.Robbie lands a job at Shield stables and meets Daisy. Working together to recover a badly broken horse, sparks fly. When Grant Ward shows up and starts abusing Daisy again, Robbie is furious. When Grant turns up dead, suspicion falls on Robbie for more than just Grant’s death. Can Daisy help him prove his innocence? Will Lucy make a full recovery and be able to run in the Charleston Stakes? And if so, can Robbie take the purse and get his family out from under the thumb of Calvin Zabo?





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Fierysky](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fierysky/gifts).



> This is fic is a work in progress, but will update on Friday, every three weeks.
> 
> special thanks for 27dragons for beta reading and to Jeremy-rennerd for Latinx culture checks and suggestions and to Sae-gin, my cousin, who provides useful insight on what it's like to be adopted by white parents, while being a person of color, as well as checking my horseback riding notes and general animal husbandry. My large animal vet friend rolls her eyes at me when I ask about research and throws a bunch of links at me with a "I don't have time for this!"
> 
> Any errors are still my own.

Tripp, a black gelding with a blaze down his nose and a single white sock, perked up a bit once Daisy turned him toward the barn and his stall and (probably) a few cups of oats and an apple. He’d been faking it a bit near the end of the back-forty trail. Spoiled, city boy, Tripp was; all prancing steps inside a ring, or at shows, but get him out in the wilderness and he’d spook at every leaf and try a dozen times to turn around.

Daisy knew it, but took him out on the trail anyway. Tripp was her favorite. If her adopted mother, Melinda, caught her on horseback again so soon after the last injury, Daisy was going to have to listen to another lecture. She was still going to get the lecture, but at least this way she got her whole ride in before she had to hear it. If she was riding in the ring where Tripp was more comfortable, Melinda would see faster, know sooner, and the ride would be over almost before it began.

Daisy’s wrists ached a little, and she expected that her left ankle wasn’t going to want to hold her up quite so well for a few hours. Being in pain all the time was exhausting. She needed to ride sometimes; while she could never get away from it, she could feel the wind on her face, listen to hoofbeats, smell the air, and it was like being pain free. At least for a little while.

And then she saw the trailer in the front drive and forgot all about it. Her aches and pains weren’t any less, but the jolt of pure, vindicated joy thrummed through her. She ducked around the side of the stables and dismounted.

As expected, her ankle buckled under her and she clutched at the saddle for balance. Tripp bore with her flailings for a few moments, then turned his head and nuzzled at her hair; hot, wet, grassy scented breath wafting over her.

“Yeah, yeah,” she said. Daisy peeled out of her riding gloves, threw them into her hard-hat, and headed for the barn. Tripp didn’t even need to be led at that point, he just clomped after her.

She managed to get Tripp’s tack off and hung back up. Tripp had to be shoved off; he liked to squash his rider between his broad side and the stall wall. The equine equivalent of a hug, but Daisy didn’t need a cracked rib, so she patted him, then pushed him back toward his feeder trough. Tripp flicked an ear at her and Daisy was grooming the horse vigorously by the time Fitz showed up in the stables.

“Wha’ are you doing?” Fitz huffed, practically throwing her bag at her. “You’re gonna be in such trouble.”

“Probably,” Daisy admitted. “Help me with my boots?” She fished in her bag and pulled out a black wrist brace and a half dozen marked boxes that contained special, silver jewelry that made her look at once like she’d been attacked by a spider and kept her joints from separating and her bones from breaking during normal activities.

As long as she didn’t fall, which is why she never wore the stupid stuff when she was out riding.

She tested her fingers gingerly, slid a double ring over her pinky and ring finger that kept the two fingers locked together -- the lowest joint in her pinky had a tendency to let go and she couldn’t count the number of times she’d broken those bones because she’d clipped the outstretched digit.

Daisy had been born with osteogenesis imperfecta, type I. Brittle bones. When her unknown mother had given birth to her, she’d emerged from the womb with a cracked femur, dislocated shoulder, and multiple fractions in her back.

Her mother had left the hospital the next day and never looked back. Daisy didn’t blame her; the medical bills for her condition were impressive, and everything she’d been able to discover about her mom was that she was probably a teenage, unwed mother. Possibly in the country illegally. And besides, she’d been adopted as an infant by Phil Coulson, and his wife, Melinda Mays. The Coulson-Mays ranch had been a good place for her, and even with her genetic condition, Daisy considered that she had a pretty good life.

Fitz worked her boot off carefully, prodded at her ankle. “Daisy,” he said, that scolding tone.

“Did I break it again?”

“I appear to have left my xray goggles in my other pants,” Fitz said. “Bu’ it’s swollen.” He pulled out a stretchy, velcro brace and wrapped the ankle with quick, efficient motion. “Placate your parents and come back to the clinic when they’re done.”

Fitz didn’t necessarily approve of her obsession with living a normal life, combined with her loose joints and faulty bones, but he knew Daisy was going to ride anyway, so he helped her.

“Did we get her back?” Daisy asked, jerking her chin toward the front and the horse trailer parked there.

“Jemma did well with the contracts,” Fitz said, eyes glowing with pride. “The judge ruled in our favor. Lucifer’s home.”

“ _Lucy_ ,” Daisy said, rolling her eyes. “It’s ridiculous name for a mare.”

Fitz spread his hands. “She’s your hellraiser, you figure it out. And she’s hurt, so we gotta get her back into condition before any re-training can be done. You stay away from her, for now. Promise me, Daisy.”

“Lucy knows me.” Daisy shook off Fitz’s hands.

“She doesn’t know anyone right now,” Fitz said. “She’s gonna need to be gentled back under a saddle, and I don’t want you to risk it. Promise. Or I’ll tell May you were out.”

Daisy blew a mouthful of air out, messing up her hair. Fitz wasn’t usually so stubborn. “What’s wrong with her?”

“She’s been treated with a harsh hand. She’s head shy and jittery. I go’ a look at her hooves, too. She’s quarter-cracked at the least.”

A bad shoeing job, or ridden hard over bad surfaces, hoof-crack wasn’t too much of a big deal. Not ideal, admittedly, but a little gum in the cracks, proper hoof-care and an ease in workload, and Lucy could be ready for riding again in as little as a few weeks. Except Fitz was giving her those puppy eyes again and she never could quite resist him.

“Go give the lovesick expression to Jemma,” Daisy teased him. “You’re wasting it on me. I’ll be fine.”

“I mean it, Daisy,” Fitz said.

“Tell ya what,” Daisy offered, “I’ll do any training with Lucy under your supervision?”

Fitz sighed and then agreed. He knew as well as she did that was all he was going to get.

Daisy struggled to her feet, ankle aching. Fuck, if she’d broken it, Melinda would confine her to the house again until she’d recovered. Fitz already had a cane out for her. Daisy hated every single one of her mobility devices with a passion that was as desperate as it was unreasonable, but what the hell else was she going to do?

She couldn’t stop living. She refused to do that.

She slipped her arm through the brace and gripped the cane’s handle. It was enough to keep her stable and steady.

Took a bracing breath, and then headed for the house. Hopefully, Melinda wouldn’t ask too many questions. It was probably a vain hope, Melinda had never let her adopted daughter get away with anything.

She rounded the side of the house, a sprawling monstrosity that was still only a third of the size of the stables. Jemma was there; as the Coulson-Mays’ stable’s lead veterinarian, Jemma always took delivery of any new (or, in this case, returning) horses.

The handler, Rodriguez, backed Lucy slowly out of the trailer, while Jemma, Melinda, and Phil watched carefully. There were cuts along the mare’s hindquarters. Daisy couldn’t clench her fists, the jewelry that kept her from accidentally breaking or dislocating her fingers kept her hands out of such dangerous shapes, but she wanted to. Every muscle in her body ached at the sight; Lola’s prize filly, and _someone_ had treated the horse badly.

Lucy was favoring her left hind leg, pulling it higher and not resting her weight evenly as she skittered around at the end of the lead. She neighed, shrill and scared, tugging at the lead line, eyes huge and round.

“Dear god, what did they do to her?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> header art by [Victaeriously](http://victaeriously.tumblr.com/)


	2. Chapter 2

Robbie glanced down at the papers in his hand. His fucking walking papers.

Well, not exactly. More of a _thanks, no thanks_ letter. He’d been riding winners for four years now. Not top place, yet, but third, and sometimes fourth. Good enough for those rich owners and their fucking stables, anyway. Or it should have been. Load of piss, is what that was. Someone had put the word out that the Reyes family was on the slide.

His uncle, Eli, was barely holding onto the lot as it was, and with the increase in Gabe’s medical bills, there wasn’t much to spare. They could raise the rents, but that would drive a lot of good people out of their homes and there weren’t a lot of people who would move into the trailer park, even if there were lots -- more expensive lots -- available. If Eli could have kept his ass away from the track, away from the bookies and their tempting offers, 3-to-1 or better, it might not have been so bad.

It wasn’t even the race-fee that kept them in cash. Robbie got a whopping two hundred dollars per race to weigh in, to sit in a saddle, and push the beast across a line. It was the winning that kept them flush. Five percent of the take, whenever he crossed in fifth through third. He’d taken a second place race once. Nine percent.

Technically, Robbie thought, he was twenty-two now. He could take Gabe and go, even if Gabe and his _madre_ had named Eli Morrow their guardian, Robbie was old enough now to take over guardianship of his brother. Gabe was just now sixteen, old enough to mostly take care of himself, when Robbie had to be gone.

But the no-ride papers, that made a difference. Without money coming in, Robbie didn’t know how he’d be able to afford a place. Not to mention, finding something accessible would be harder. More expensive.

Maybe a few more years, two at the most, and Gabe’s SSI would come to him instead of going into Eli’s bank.

Two more years.

Robbie sighed.

A car pulled up to the trailer lot and Janet got out of the driver’s seat. She popped the trunk of her car and yanked Gabe’s wheelchair out, struggling with it. Robbie leapt to his feet and went to help her, scooting the chair around and holding it steady while Gabe climbed out of the passenger seat and settled himself in it.

“Hey, Jan,” Robbie said. “Thanks for giving Gabe a lift.”

“Yeah, it’s no trouble,” Janet said. “He and Tracy are both on the team, so it’s not far out of the way.”

Gabe was leaning out of his chair to take his things from Tracy, Janet’s sister. They talked a bit, something about a class assignment for their physics class. Tracy held her hand up flat by her ear. “Call me,” she said.

“Willdo. Thanks again!” Gabe waved cheerfully at the sisters as they drove off.

“What happened, bus break down?” There was an afterschool activity bus, which was usually how Gabe made his way home. “You never take rides. Or you just want a reason to hollar after Janet’s sister?”

Gabe ducked his head. “Tracy asked me,” he confessed. “And… I didn’t want to insult her. I can do it on my own, you know that.”

Gabe had resented the hell out of that wheelchair for the first six months or so that he was in it. Wanting to prove himself, wanting to be left alone. Spurning offers of friendship and anything he saw as pity. But recently, he’d started to come around. He made the robotics team, and that had given him some of his confidence back.

Before the accident, Gabe was brash and bold. Baseball player and while he had to keep his grades up to play sports, he’d never been all that academic.

Somewhere in there, bored and watching YouTube compulsively rather than even try to hang out with any of his old friends, Gabe had gotten around to watching some TED talks. And finding out about Stephen Hawking. And Col. James Rhodes, who walked with a pair of high tech leg braces after an accident had snapped his spine. Both men were heros now, in the Reyes household.

And it seemed like all Gabe had been waiting for was to find his place in this brave new world. He went for academics instead of sports, learning and soaking up information like a sponge. He applied for -- and then had to fight to get in, since the school administration had him firmly categorized as jock and just coasting -- the upper level, pre-college courses. He got onto the robotics team from pure talent.

“So?” Robbie left the word open ended.

“I think she might say yes,” Gabe confessed. At first, Gabe had been virulently against the idea of going to prom. _Who the hell wanted to dance with a goddamn cripple?_

In the end, it might have been Robbie himself that had convinced Gabe; not through words, or arguments, but just how devastated Robbie had been when Gabe called himself that. Like his whole life was over just because he was confined to a chair. It wasn’t enough for Robbie that Gabe had survived a horrific accident, Gabe needed to live. He needed to be happy. Gabe’s happiness was somehow _essential_ to Robbie’s.

Robbie would have done anything for his little brother, his _hermano_ , except the one thing he couldn’t do. Fix the boy’s broken back. So he was determined to do everything else. _Anything_ else.

He’d promised Gabe a trip to Disney; the park was very accessible, most of the rides were available even for people with disabilities. Magic and joy and food that was bad for you. Robbie had started a small savings account for that purpose. And he wasn’t about to lose it because he was dismissed from riding this season.

Robbie tucked his walking papers -- or, more exactly, his _not riding_ papers -- into his back pocket. It wasn’t fair to burden Gabe with that knowledge. Not yet. Not until he’d fixed the problem. Gotten a new job. Something. He’d find something else. There was always something else.

He just needed to find it.

***

There weren’t that many ranches in the district that weren’t owned by Zarbo or his cronies; two, to be precise. Shield ranch, owned by Melinda Mays and the Arcade, owned by Holden Radcliffe. Neither of them had run winners in several races, and in fact, Radcliffe was pretty close to losing his lands entirely and getting gobbled up.

Robbie wasn’t sure what the whole deal was; how could it be a race if all the horses were owned by the same conglomerate. There was no challenge in that, the money would go straight to Zarbo. Might as well just have people buy tickets for a spectacle or parade. There was no glory in running for roses when the whole flower bed already belonged to you.

Shield had been quietly gathering up some of the older racers in the district. Trying to breed a winner, Robbie figured. He wasn’t sure there’d be work there.

But Radcliffe had turned him away without a hearing, already in Zarbo’s pocket, Robbie sneered. He hopped into his car and drove to the far side of town. Not like there weren’t ranches farther away, sometimes they brought horses in from out of the area for the race, but Robbie wouldn’t be able to compete with their local jockeys, unless someone happened to fall ill day of the race. He didn’t think he could bet on that.

The Shield ranch was nice and tidy, a good stretch of fair ground, several in fences pens, and a nice layout for someone who wanted to run hunters, more show horses than race-track runners. He pulled in to the gravel drive, headed to the barn. The owner might have final say on hiring, but the stablemaster would be the person who made the recommendation.

In the barn, Robbie found a curly-haired man and a woman with honey-brown hair pinned up at the nape of her neck. They were examining a skittish and ill-used piece of horseflesh in the middle of the stable floor. Robbie raised a hand to get their attention when someone grabbed his wrist.

“What are you doing here?”

Robbie twisted out of the grip with ease, not even thinking. He went to snap at the person, and stopped dead.

A stunningly beautiful woman, with warm golden skin and dark eyes, her black hair gathered in a loose tail. She wore an assortment of rings and bracelets made from silver that glittered as she moved.

“I… uh…--” Robbie’d never quite been struck dumb by a beautiful girl before, but something about the way her eyes snapped with fury, the set of her jaw, and the lush red of her lips stole all the words from his mouth, crushed all the air out of his lungs.

She cast a longing look back over her shoulder. “Whatever you want, let’s move out of the way. Lucy’s upset.”

“The horse, or the girl?”

“Jemma would skin you alive for that comment,” the woman said. “Doctor Simmons doesn’t like being called a _girl_. It’s belittling.” She was rubbing absently at her wrist, twisting it this way and that.

“Gotcha,” Robbie said. “Look, I’m Roberto Reyes. I’m looking for local work.”

She looked him up and down; she was only a tiny bit shorter than he was, but he had the compact, lithe build of a jockey. It wouldn’t be hard to figure, and sure enough, she said, “Rider?”

“Yes, ma’am,” he responded. “But I can do other stabling work in the meanwhile. I--”

“Lost your seat.”

Robbie nodded, feeling the crush of rejection again. Did everyone know? Had he done something that had spread among the owners; he didn’t think so. He was a fair hand with a racer, and while he hadn’t taken a first prize cup, he had a respectable track record.

“Well, Reyes,” the woman said, “if you’re willing to take a risk or two, I might have a job for you.”

“And you are?”

“Daisy Johnson,” she said. “Lucy’s my racer, if we can heal her injuries and gentle her back to running a track.”

“I can take a risk.”

“Then you can have a job.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cautions: Some racist behavior on the part of a secondary character, exchange of insults*

“Cal,” Daisy greeted her boss with a quick nod. “Messages are on your desk, and Dr. Radcliffe’s been here three times in the last week for appointments that you--” She trailed off helplessly. She didn’t want to say _have been deliberately skipping_ , because that’s exactly what Calvin Zabo had been doing. Cal had a temper and pointing out his flaws was sure to bring it to a boil.

He’d never directed that temper at Daisy, not so far, but she’d certainly heard him yelling on his office phone, or throwing things. Each crash of book or keyboard or, once, a bottle of expensive whiskey, against the wall made Daisy wince and flinch.

Cal scoffed. “That blowhard,” he said. “Don’t want to talk to him. Just want him to sell. Let him know, next time he comes back that unless he’s ready to talk price, I don’t care.”

“I’ll let him know,” Daisy promised. She was pretty sure Radcliffe knew that already; Cal had not exactly been subtle about what he was doing. What Radcliffe was doing, that was anyone’s guess. He was generally under the impression that he was smarter than everyone around. Smarts, however, didn’t have anything to do with wisdom, and even less to do with _money_.

“How was your weekend?” Cal leaned his hip against her desk, not quite looking at her.

“Good,” she said. “I went for a ride.”

Unlike everyone else in Daisy’s life, Cal didn’t scold her. He didn’t even pointedly look at her cane, or the way her hands were all decorated in her joint-locking jewelry. “That’s fantastic,” he said. “I know you like to ride. Tell me about it, where’d you go? You’re riding Tripp these days, you said. He’s got a good gait.”

Daisy smiled. She didn’t know what it was about Cal, everyone had warned her about him. He’d gone through several secretaries from the -- admittedly limited -- pool of women in town who were willing to do that sort of work, and in the end had offered her a lot more for the job than she would have expected. She couldn’t type very fast, her handwriting was for shit, and it was taking her forever to learn Cal’s organization and filing system.

When he’d offered her the job, it came with enough of a salary that Daisy had worried that it was _that_ kind of job, the kind where she was supposed to be a decoration.

So far, though, nothing like that had happened. Cal wasn’t easy to work for, he was demanding and exacting, but he wasn’t unreasonable. And he hadn’t flirted with her, or touched her or anything.

Daisy had had enough things go wrong in her life that she was still braced for the other shoe to drop, but she didn’t even know what it was supposed to be. She rambled on about her ride, about Fitz and his fussing, and then finally added, “we brought on a new stable hand this weekend, too, so that’s good.”

“Yeah?”

“Robbie Reyes,” Daisy said. “You know him?”

Cal’s eyes went cold and narrow. “Yes.” He got up from his semi-seat on her desk. “You should be careful. The Reyes family’s bad news.” He swept into his office and closed the door.

What the _hell_ was that about?

 ***

Shield’s stables were extensive, two huge barns in an L format. Wide aisles, a good sized grain room, another room for tack and harnesses and brushes. A wide, open ended stall for shoeing and vet care.

What the barns were missing, Robbie thought, were horses. He walked past empty, open stall, the hay golden and glittering and pristine. Like they were awaiting occupants.

“Oh, we keep that fresh for temporary lodgings,” a woman said. She was shorter than Daisy, her long hair pulled back in gentle waves down her back. “But it only needs to be changed out if we have a guest. We rent out the stalls, for local events.”

“Yeah, okay,” Robbie said. “Robbie Reyes, new stablehand.”

“Yes, Daisy told me,” the woman said, offering her hand. “Jemma Simmons, Shield’s veterinary services.”

“They have a full time vet for, what--”

“We have a dozen horses here, but no, Fitz and I also have a mobile service. Simply, we make our residence here, and offer substantial discounts and services to Shield as part of our rental agreement.”

A dozen horses, the owners, with two full time vets, no matter what mobile services they had, and Daisy… was his new job just charity? There wasn’t enough work to be had at Shield for that many people.

“Daisy asked me to get you settled in today,” Jemma said. “We can take the tour if you want, do small talk, and pretend, or I can let you get right to it.”

“Let’s just skip to the good parts,” Robbie suggested.

“Very well,” Jemma said. “For today, I should like to introduce you to your main charge.” She led the way through the stables. A few velvety noses poked out of their stalls to sniff and stare. An orange barn cat trotted from one stall to another, seeking the mice and other vermin that were part of the cat’s rental agreement.  

“This is Lucy,” Jemma said, drawing close to one of the larger stalls. The horse inside squealed, and soon after, two sharp bangs issued from inside the stall.

“She’s a kicker, that one,” Robbie commented. He pushed up onto his toes to get a look through the stall’s bars.

Lucy was deep, coal black, with a touch of red that caught the sunlight and threw it back in patches like fire. Her tail was a matted mess of knots, and the mane as well, hung limp down the mare’s neck, thick with briars and twigs.

“She’s been ill-used,” Jemma said, as if it wasn’t obvious. “The last few years, Shield has been buying back our lost stock, acquiring some breeding rights when that wasn’t feasible. Lucy has just come home to us. She needs care, and to be gentled to the saddle again. She’s…”

“Feisty,” Robbie said as the animal threw herself at the stall’s boards, trying to bite Robbie through the bars. He didn’t recoil, which seemed to confuse her. “There’s a girl. I see you.”

“She’ll need to be calmed, and then walked, if you can manage it. Grooming, preferably without having to restrain her. We understand this may be a time consuming project.”

That was putting it mildly. Even if Lucy would stand still for it, that mane alone was going to take hours to comb through and then pull. His fingers were going to be _raw_ , and that was not even considering the fact that she’d probably bite and try to escape.

Jemma put her hand on Robbie’s shoulder. “This is an undertaking of love, you understand. Daisy, she loves this mare.”

“I’ll do everything I can, ma’am,” Robbie told her. He stared at the horse, her skin twitching like she was flicking off invisible flies, ears flat against her head, teeth bared. _Move away, or I’ll bite you._

_It’s a job, and you need a job_ , Robbie reminded himself.

***

Robbie was still reminding himself that he needed a job when he threw himself down onto a bar stool at the Rusty Nail.

Luis poured him a drink and was about to settle into one of his rambling, Luis-like stories, but an early drunk was getting rowdy, leaving Robbie alone at the bar to contemplate medicinal whiskey.

“Rough day?”

“Hmmm?” The guy speaking was handsome in a very J. Crew catalog way, perfectly coiffed hair and tailored clothes. He was half-draped across the bar, surveying the room with predatory indifference. “Yeah, work was a bit tough. Got kicked twice, bitten once, and rolled over on. Gonna stiffen up like a board, trying to sleep tonight.”

“You work in retail, José?” J. Crew laughed at his own joke.

Robbie restrained himself from rolling his eyes. White guys. “Stablehand,” he corrected. Not because J. Crew cared, but because Robbie wasn’t ashamed of what he did. He worked, he put money on the table. If his skin was darker than J. Crew, if his r’s trilled when he talked, that didn’t make him _lesser_. J. Crew was just a dick, nothing to worry about.

Although there was the frisson of heat that built in his spine at the causal assumption of-- Robbie didn’t even know what. Robbie was short -- like all riders had to be -- but he was twenty pounds of aggression in a ten pound bag. So his _madre_ had said and so Robbie knew was the truth.

J. Crew scoffed. “Yeah, everyone’s horse-mad around here. Reminds me why I left.”

Robbie didn’t bother to answer that; as far as he was concerned, J. Crew could bugger back to where he’d left in the first place. No one around here was going to miss him.

“There’s no action here, hey, _amigo_ ,” J. Crew said, slapping Robbie’s bicep as if they were friends. “Know someplace I could score a piece of ass?”

Robbie’s fist bunched up against his will, the short nails digging into his palm. “Take your hand off me, or you’re going to lose it. _Gringo_.”

“Easy does it,” J. Crew said, although there as a glint in his eye that made Robbie think J. Crew was stewing for a fight _anyway_. “You don’t want anyone coming around, asking about your papers.”

_Papers._ Jesus wept. Robbie’d been raised in LA until his _madre_ had passed on, he was just as much of an American as this asshole. _We didn’t cross the border, the border crossed us._ “Take your weak-ass wheat juice and get out of my face,” Robbie said and knocked back his whiskey.

“And if I don’t feel like it, _culero_?”

Bar fight. Uncle Eli was going to be pissed.

Robbie punched the guy anyway.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> * culero - spanish curse word/slang - coward, wuss, asshole, diaper. Depending. In certain parts of south america, it also means gay/homosexual or womanizer. It's a very flexible word. But in this particular case, Robbie means it as "asshole"


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter contains a bit of gaslighting and emotional manipulation/abuse to Daisy by Grant Ward. You know your own mindset, so take care. If you want more details before reading, please drop me an ask over at [tumblr](https://tisfan.tumblr.com/) or [pillowfort](https://www.pillowfort.io/tisfan).

“Umhph?” Daisy scrambled at her alarm, which didn’t seem right because it was still dark outside, and she never got up when it was dark, even just after Daylight Savings ended, which is certainly wasn’t, since it was June and not November.

All of which got her brain online enough to realize that her alarm wasn’t going off, her phone was ringing.

“This better be important,” she said, tucking the device into the space between her ear and the pillow.

Everything hurt. Waking up was an exercise in delicate torture, each bone and joint checking in and it was all bad goddamn news.

“Hey, sweetheart,” a voice said in her ear. “Sorry to wake you--”

“No.”

“No? What no?”

“You want the full list? No, you’re not sorry to wake me, no, I’m not your sweetheart, and no, whatever it is you want, you can’t have it.” _Especially_ if it was a damn booty call. She didn’t bother to say that out loud, because once she brought the subject around to sex, then Grant was going to be all up in her business wondering why she was thinking about _that_ , he certainly hadn’t brought that up, and did she miss him?

She did, and she didn’t. Grant fucking Ward. She missed him, and she was better off without him, no matter what her damn libido sometimes said.

“No, no, come on, Daisy, I’m in trouble here, and I need some help, you know I’ll totally make it up to you.” Grant was all the way to wheedling, and he sounded--

“Are you drunk?”

“Not so much as I’d meant to be,” Grant said. “I’m in jail, actually.”

“What?” Daisy actually sat up in bed, and then winced as her fingers and spine protested the movement. “What for?”

Not that Grant probably didn’t deserve a little jail time. The man was a bully, apt to solve problems with his fists, and when he couldn’t get away with that, he was pugnacious and in people’s faces. Also, he was a thief, even if Daisy couldn’t prove it. Oh, and let’s not forget serial cheater, although she would admit that probably wasn’t against the law, even if it was a dick move.

“Some wetback asshole got into it with me,” Grant said. “I dunno, he was drunk.”

“Yeah, what you do to him?” Daisy sighed and pushed herself up from the bed, fumbling in the dim light from her phone for the light switch. Because nothing was ever Grant’s fault, she could count the number of occasions that he’d admitted to a share of the blame in anything on one hand and have fingers left over.

She wasn’t really listening, pulling her clothes on and finding her shoes while Grant blustered and complained. Apparently, on top of everything else, the cops hadn’t let him have an ice pack for his eye. “--it’s not that bad, you should see his fucking face, but still. That’s like cruel and unusual.”

“Pretty sure there’s nothing unusual about thinking maybe a drunk idiot who gets in a bar fight should sleep it off, Grant,” Daisy said. She stepped into a pair of flats and checked her jeans pocket for the keys to her truck. “I’m coming to get you, and you owe me, so much.”

“Anything you want, sweetheart,” Grant said.

Daisy was halfway to the police station before she wondered why she was doing this at all, why she was bailing Grant fucking Ward, her damn ex boyfriend, out of jail. Why she was putting five hundred dollars of her own money out for him. And for that matter, what the hell she was going to do with him once she got him out of jail. His car was probably impounded, and so she’d have to drive him home, and then back out to the station later.

And why was it that she always ended up way in over her head whenever she talked to him? This was going to be one of those favors that stretched out until she never saw the end of it.

“Fuck.”

She took a few moments in the parking lot of the police station to consider her life and what she wanted out of it and how none of that was Grant, and yet, she kept ending up back in this position of doing something for Grant.

“I don’t even like you,” she said, when the cop had finished filling out the paperwork, taken her money, and remanded Grant to her custody. That was five hundred dollars she was never going to see again; she knew how this worked. Even if he went to his damn trial, the fines and fees would come out before any money would come back, and if there was any to spare, he would “forget” to give it back to her.

“Aw, baby, you love me,” Grant said, and went to kiss her. Daisy twisted her neck at the last moment, giving him cheek. And even then, she could smell beer on his breath.

“Go home, and make him sleep it off,” the cop said, and Daisy rolled her eyes. None of this was on her, honestly, and she didn’t like the implication that Grant’s actions reflected on her.

They were making their way out of the precinct when she felt eyes on her. She glanced up, saw Robbie Reyes, the new hire, at another cop’s desk, filling out the same paperwork. There was a boy in a wheelchair and an older man with him, family, probably.

Robbie had a black eye and a scuff of purple along his jaw, his lip swelling. His eyes narrowed as he looked at Grant and he raised one hand to dab meaningfully at his split lip. His expression went cold and ugly. He nodded once, to acknowledge Daisy’s wave.

The boy, probably in his mid-teens, said something in Spanish, but Daisy’s high school lessons and her pigeon getting by in the language when she was talking to native speakers, wasn’t good enough for her to make it out from across the room.

“You got in a fight with him?” Daisy jerked her chin at Reyes, as soon as they were out of the room. “Goddammit, Grant, can’t you do a single thing without making my life harder?”

“What’s your problem?”

“That’s Mr. Reyes, out new stable hand. I have to _work_ with him, Grant.”

“That’s easily fixed,” Grant said. “Just fire him. He’s probably illegal, anyway.”

“ _People_ can’t be illegal.” Daisy sighed. “Just… get in the truck. I am so done with this evening.”

She slammed the door on him as soon as he climbed into her truck, ignoring whatever he was going to say next. Daisy turned the radio way up as soon as she started the engine, not wanting to talk. “Leave it--” she said when he tried to turn it down. “I’m under caffeinated and I don’t want to fall asleep at the wheel.”

“You’re cranky,” Grant said, like she was an overtired toddler.

“Yeah. I wonder why.” She mouthed the words to the song, not singing, but not wanting to talk. If she stuck to her guns, she could drop Grant off and not wake up in his bed again. She concentrated on the road, on the headache building behind her eyes, and the memory of the lack of smile on Robbie’s bruised face.

She didn’t need Grant Ward in her life.

***

“That’s the guy you got into a fight with, yeah?” Gabe said, his Spanish a soothing balm on Robbie’s ears. He answered back in that same language without thinking about it.

“Yes.”

“You know her? She looks like she knows you.”

“She’s the boss, at the stables,” Robbie said, short.

Uncle Eli was glaring at both of them. Robbie, because Eli was bailing him out and talking with the cops. Gabe, because Gabe was speaking Spanish. Uncle Eli was in the old school, thinking that it was best to blend in with American culture, pretend to be all-American. It was stupid; they were Americans, they’d been on the same land for generations. It wasn’t much land anymore, but Uncle Eli owned the lot. Subdivided and rented out, they made their money renting the land for mobile homes and for RV hookups.

Their neighbors and friends were maids and gardeners, mechanics and nannies. They worked for all the rich whites, and at night, they came back to the lot, and they were _home_.

There was no reason not to speak Spanish, not to enjoy their culture. It wasn’t like they’d ever fit in, anyway. No amount of unaccented English was going to hide the color of Robbie’s skin. And no one was ever going to let him forget it.

“Man,” Gabe said, watching as Daisy left the precinct. “You think she’s gonna fire you for getting in a hassle with her boyfriend?”

“I don’t know,” Robbie said. He hoped not; he needed that job. But at the same time, if that asshat from the bar was going to be hanging out at the stables, maybe he didn’t need the job quite so badly.

“We’re leaving,” Uncle Eli said, putting one hand down on Robbie’s shoulder. Eli was huge; Robbie had gotten his lithe build and lack of height from his father’s side of the family. He leaned heavy on Robbie, fingers biting into his shoulder. Robbie knew better than to complain about it, but he ducked out from under Eli’s hold.

“Uncle Eli--”

“You shut it,” Eli snapped, poking Robbie in the chest. “I don’t want to hear your excuses, and I don’t want to hear anything else unless it’s sorry, Uncle Eli, I’ll never do it again. We’ll talk later.”

Eli’s eyes shifted to glance at Gabe, and Robbie knew what that meant; he’d get to hear about all his faults and failings, all of what Robbie and Gabe owed their Uncle for taking them in, everything. Just not when Gabe was around. Both of them went out of their way to keep Gabe as happy as he could be. Poor kid suffered enough.

“I’m sorry, Uncle Eli,” Robbie said, dutifully. “I’ll… never do it again.” That was probably a lie, but Eli wasn’t going to call him out on it. Not this time. Not in front of Gabe.

“All right,” Eli said. “Let’s get home, I hate these places.”

Robbie sighed. Eli, their madre had told them, was a bit of a wild one in his youth. Robbie had gotten his temper directly from his uncle. But that didn’t make Eli proud, or even rueful, just angry.

“Thanks,” Robbie said. “For coming to get me.”

“You may be stupid and hot-headed sometimes,” Eli said, stiff and uncomfortable. “But you’re still family. Still blood. I--” he glanced at Gabe again, guilty as hell the way he looked sometimes, like Eli had anything to do with Gabe’s broken back. It was a stupid, horrible accident, that was all. “You’re family.” 


	5. Chapter 5

“Daisy!”

Daisy groaned and rolled over. There was too much light in her room and she raised a hand to shade her eyes before she even wanted to try to open them. Sometimes, she really thought she should be able to drink if she was going to have a damn hangover anyway. Not that she drank; that would have been the height of stupid. Drinking, when a fall could mean broken bones? No thanks.

She was exhausted and every bone in her body ached. She managed crack open one eye and look at the clock. Three minutes past eight.

She’d overslept, because of course she had.

“Daisy!” Melinda appeared in the doorway, resting bitch face in full effect. “I thought you’d left already. And then--”

“You found my truck parked over by the south shed, I know,” Daisy said. She tried to stifle her audible whimpering as her knees and ankles reported in. She’d jumped down from the truck by the time she finally made it home, rather than climbing. She probably had shin splints, at least, and Fitz was going to kill her. Assuming she lived long enough for Fitz to kill her.

“Where were you last night?”

“Grant called,” she said. It took a little bit of effort, but she got herself upright in bed. “He needed a ride. I parked over there so I wouldn’t wake you up when I got in.” She always felt that tinge of anger whenever Melinda asked her where she was going, or scolded her for being late, or any of the other fifteen million parental types of things that Melinda did. She was Daisy’s mom, and Daisy knew that she worried, but really. Daisy was, technically and legally, an adult. It just didn’t always seem like it.

“Are we dating Grant again?” That actually got a raised eyebrow and the not-quite-scowl on Melinda’s face went a little more toward the scowly part.

“ _We_ are not dating Grant,” Daisy said. “He called, it was really late. I gave him a ride. That’s all.”

“That’s good,” Melinda said. “I don’t think Phil wants that boy around here anymore. I thought he moved.”

Daisy only shrugged. She wasn’t Grant’s babysitter. She wasn’t sure how long he was in town for. She didn’t ask, because she hadn’t wanted Grant to think she cared. “Can you hand me my pill bottle?”

“What happened?” Melinda’s eyes narrowed, but she handed over the easy-open bottle and watched as Daisy swallowed two pills, using the bottle of water at her bedside table to wash them down. It wasn’t quite _did he hurt you_ , which Daisy felt Melinda always wanted to ask.

“I tripped, getting out of the truck,” she said. “I was just tired, and--”

Not quite a lie, not really. Grant hadn’t pushed her. Not physically. He’d just asked her to dinner; to pay her back, to thank her, and it wasn’t a date, really, come on. She’d turned him down, repeatedly, and she had driven away in the middle of his third attempt to talk her into it. Which made her angry. Why couldn’t Grant just listen to her the first time? He’d probably texted her again before she’d even gotten home, but she couldn’t be bothered to read them, and she’d shut her phone off.

Which was why she had overslept. She could just lay a whole bed of trouble at Grant’s door, except he’d probably expect her to lay in it.

Ug.

“Can you call Cal for me, tell him I’ll be a little late, but I’ll make up the time.”

“Don’t you skip your lunch break,” Melinda said, but she headed off to the other room, and that was probably as much as Daisy could expect.

No lecture this time, so that was good.

“Fuuuuuck,” she breathed, getting to her feet and limping toward the shower. She wasn’t sure she’d be able to wash her hair; her arms hurt like hell, too, but maybe she could just stand under the hot water for a while and it would help.

A little.

As it turned out, more than a little. Her muscles loosened up between the heat and the pills and she was even able to work a little shampoo through her hair. Shaving was right out, she was dizzy enough that she didn’t want to bend over and risk a fall in the bathroom. But that was okay, it wasn’t like she was taking her clothes off for anyone.

It was going to be a good day, she decided.

“Cal says don’t worry about it, whenever you can get in,” Melinda told her. “So sit down and have some breakfast.”

Daisy rolled her eyes, shoveled a fried egg and some bacon onto her toast and ate it like a sandwich, headed down to her truck. “Fitz, I need a favor, can you--”

Instead of Fitz’s curly head and eager smile, she got Robbie Reyes, instead. “He’s helping the Doc,” he said.

“Oh,” Daisy said, taking a step back. “I, uh-- yikes, that looks painful.”

“What do you need?”

“Look, let’s just skip the awkward, I don’t need it,” Daisy said. “I’m not even going to say sorry, because I spent the last two years being sorry about Grant Ward and I don’t intend to do it any longer. He’s my ex. And I’m pretty sure he texted me last night after I bailed his ass out, and I don’t want to read it. So… I was gonna ask Fitz to do it, but you’re here, and… could you just see if it was Grant, and delete the texts if it is?”

“You can’t do it?” Robbie made no movement toward her phone, even though she was all but waving it in his face. He was almost the same height as she was, whipcord thin, and wearing dark gray jeans that clung to muscular thighs, and a black leather jacket with a white bar on it. Nice, she thought, not to have to crane her neck to look up at a man. Her neck hurt too much for that, today, at least.

Daisy heaved a sigh. “I’m a soft touch, okay? It’s pathetic, I know. But I pick up every stray barn cat and I feed ducks in the park. Only good, nutritious food, too. No stale bread, just peas and grapes. I have a hard time saying no, okay? And I don’t want to do whatever it is Grant wants to do, so if you just delete the text for me, I don’t have to know what it is, so I don’t have to feel guilty about it. Okay? Help me out here.”

“I’m gonna help you out, girl,” Robbie said. “I’m gonna help you out by walking you through it. You want to ignore him, let’s ignore him.” There was the faintest trace of a smile on Robbie’s face, the way his mouth tipped up on one side, the glint in his eyes. It was a good look on him, sly and satisfied and just a little smug.

“How are you going to do that?”

“I’m gonna talk you through the steps, and you’re gonna follow them,” Robbie said. “But you gotta do it on your own, nobody can do it for you. You want to be a liberated, strong woman? Act like it.”

“Yeah, that never works out very well for me,” Daisy said.

“Try it,” Robbie said. “Open up that text, click his name, and then, there’s three dots, you see ‘em up on the upper right hand side. I want you to open that, and click Block Contact. Bingo. You never have to do that asshole a favor again.”

Daisy laughed, even though she knew it didn’t work that way. It never worked that way. Grant would borrow someone’s phone, or he’d come out to the ranch, or--

\-- well, she was pretty sure if she told Melinda she didn’t want to see him again, Melinda wouldn’t let him on the property.

It could happen. She could… maybe. Ignore Grant long enough and maybe he’d go away.

“New rules?” Daisy asked.

“Don’t pick up the phone, girl,” Robbie said. “That’s all there is to it. You don’t want him in your life, you don’t let him in.”

She hesitated a long moment, then clicked it. _Block Contact_.

She hitched in a deep breath and let it out on a laugh. Strange how a weight seemed to slide right off her shoulders. “Wow.”

“Feel good, does it?”

“Yeah, yeah, it kinda does,” she said.

“You let me know if I can do anything else for you,” Robbie said, and she didn’t hear anything in that, no suggestions of _favors_ he might be tempted to do, or ask for.

“I’ll, you know, keep it in mind,” she told him. “Thank you.”


	6. Chapter 6

The trailer smelled like popcorn and Portico; Gabe’s favorite snack. Popcorn with sugar-chili-salt on it. Robbie kicked his boots off and into the bin by the door. The trailer’s carpet was wearing thin as it was. And it wasn’t like Gabe could take off his wheels.

Robbie and some of his crew had spent a whole weekend building a wrap ramp so that Gabe could get up and into the unit. Before that, there’d been three rickety planks balanced on cinder. Gabe’s friend Billy had gotten the wood -- good, hardware store, water treated, pressure planks -- and brought it over in the back of his pickup.

Robbie hadn’t asked questions about it, he’d just gotten to work.

“You best have eaten something besides popcorn and chili,” Robbie said. The lights were dim in the double-wide, but twinkling in a way that reminded Robbie of Christmas.

Which was, apparently, what Gabe had been doing; he had the couch yanked out and turned around to serve as the back for a prop-up blanket fort. A string of lights was draped across the blanket and probably a fire hazard.

His chair was abandoned against one wall, and Gabe was laying on his belly inside the fort, eating popcorn by the handful and watching a movie. Tracey, the girl he’d invited to prom, was laying next to him. She had a bowl of the spicy popcorn in front of her, but she wasn’t eating from it.

Robbie didn’t blame her, really. Portico was an acquired taste.

“Hey kid,” Robbie said, ducking his head under the pillowfort. “Oh, Tracey, good to see you. How was school? You two got homework?”

“Bah, homework,” Gabe said, flicking the remote, pausing the two characters mid-sequence.

“Is that bah, because you’re not doing it, or bah, because it’s already done?”

“We did it, already, Mr. Reyes,” Tracey said.

“Oh, hey, is that Gabe’s special popcorn?” Robbie asked. “Can I have some, I’ll trade you a couple candy bars for it?”

Tracey handed over the popcorn with alacrity, letting Robbie dig around in the kitchen cabinets for a few chocolate marshmallow bars, sticky-sweet and chewy, but more palatable to the typical American.

Because Robbie was a bit of an asshole, and also, it’s what big brothers did, he sat cross-legged between Gabe and Tracey, using his knees to push both of them away from each other and toward the edges of the blanket fort.

“Good construction here,” he noted. Gabe had used the beach umbrella, propped up at an angle, to secure the top of the fort, and to give them something to wrap the lights around. A wide assortment of pillows and cozy blankets and stuffed animals -- Gabe must have dug some of those out of storage, Robbie hadn’t seen them since Gabe was in fifth grade or so -- provided the soft flooring. “What are we watching?”

“Don’t recall inviting you,” Gabe said, sullen, but a smile was twitching at the corner of his mouth.

Tracey chewed frantically, trying to get through the thick, sticky candy. “It’s okay, he can stay, right, Gabe? We’re watching _Fast and the Furious_ \--” she rooted around on the floor to find the familiar redbox case. “-- _Tokyo Drift_. What’s that, three?”

Gabe still liked fast cars, even though it was unlikely he’d ever be able to drive. Robbie wondered if he was enjoying the film, or punishing himself with _I’ll nevers_.

“Yeah, the new one just hit the stores,” Gabe said, “so a bunch of the older ones are for rent, now.”

“You roll up to the Tiny Giant to get that?” By himself. Robbie swallowed hard, he didn’t like Gabe out in the evening.

“I gotta go to--” Tracey waved a hand down the hall. “Hold the movie til I get back.” She scrambled out of the blanket fort, probably trying to avoid an embarrassing conversation.

“Tracey walked with me,” Gabe muttered, resentful. “I didn’t see anyone, no way. What are you doing, man? Getting in the way?”

“Chaperoning,” Robbie said, smirking. “Someone’s got to be the responsible one around here. Where’s Uncle Eli?”

“Where else?”

Robbie sighed. “Yeah.”

When Tracey came back, Robbie ceded his spot to her. He didn’t leave, staying on one side of the fort and watching Vin Diesel kick ass and drive fast, zoning out.

If Gabe stole a kiss there before the movie ended, Robbie wasn’t going to stop him. At least the kid had gotten back to living, wanting, and doing. Robbie wasn’t sure if he could have managed it. If he couldn’t sit in a saddle and feel the wind in his hair, he wasn’t sure there’d be anything left for him.

***

The office phone rang and Daisy picked up the line.

“Zabo’s Ranch, Cal’s office. Daisy Johnson speaking, how can I help you today?”

No one said anything, and Daisy went through the routine of checking to make sure the call was connected -- it was -- and said hello a few more times, before hanging up. She rattled the disconnect button a few times. Whoever was calling had done so four times already that morning, and while she might have suspected that it was Grant, trying to go around her blocked cell phone, it just didn’t have that vibe to it.

Grant wouldn’t have hesitated to talk, for one thing, if he’d gotten through to her.

Unfortunately, Cal had gotten his phone system back in the early nineties and hadn’t bothered to upgrade it since practically before Daisy was born. There was no incoming call display number on the old gray and black screen. Not that that meant anything; so many spam callers spoofed local numbers anyway to tempt the unwary into answering.

There were so many things it could be, really. Glitchy phone. Someone who was butt dialing with their cellphones -- Cal had a number of employees and not all of them were entirely stupid, and that was being generous. Or one of the many smaller ranchers in the area who’d been bought out or were in the process of being bought out, and wanted to give Cal a piece of their mind, without having worked up the courage.

Daisy speculated on the call on and off for the next hour, while the phone didn’t ring, and she did her job.

Cal had recently been making several land purchases and gotten a ton of building permits, and Daisy needed to correctly label and file them all. It was tedious work, really, especially since the files were thick, and she had to bend out the bottoms of the folders in order to get them to stay straight. Her hands were aching inside of twenty minutes.

Daisy got up, stretched her back gingerly, listening to each pop and snap of her spine to make sure it was only normal joint noise and not anything more. She was going to get a cup of coffee; not that she particularly liked coffee, but the warm mug would be soothing against her hands and it was an excuse to be away from her desk for a little while.

The phone rang again.

“Zabo’s Ranch, Cal’s offic--”

“Daisy?”

“Yes, you’ve reached Daisy Johnson, how can I help you today, ma’am?” Daisy said. She twisted back into her chair and reached for pen and paper. She didn’t always need to take notes on calls, but having the pen in her hand reminded her that she was supposed to remember. Like putting a sticky note on a memory, writing or doodling helped her concentrate.

“I… my name is Jiaying,” the woman said, hesitating between each word as if English wasn’t her first language, or if she wanted to make very sure of what she said.

“Jiaying,” Daisy repeated, drawing a little image of a stick-figure horse on the margin. “Is that your last name, ma’am--”

“First name,” she said. “I wonder, could I ask you some questions, personal questions?”

Daisy squinched one eye shut. “Ma’am, if I might know what you wanted, I could--”

“When is your birthday, Miss Johnson?”

“I’m sorry, who is this?” Daisy asked. Birthday was personal information, the sort people could use to start the process of identity theft. Not that anyone with a Facebook account couldn’t usually figure out someone’s birthday. And maybe, if Daisy Johnson was a normal person, she wouldn’t have worried about it too much.

But Daisy wasn’t normal. She was thirty years old and she knew she was born in the summer, in 1988. But while her birth certificate listened July 5th, it could have been anywhere from June 30th to the 5th, as far as the hospital staff knew.

Her mother had brought her in, broken in a dozen places, screaming and undernourished, and just left her there, protected by the Safe Haven laws.

 No one knew who her mother or father were, and not a lot of effort had gone into finding her parents. Daisy told herself she didn’t miss her parents; she had parents. Melinda and Phil were her parents, and they’d done a damn fine job of raising her, too. She was safe, well looked after, and if she was still living in her parent’s home when she was an adult, well, that wasn’t unexpected, either.

Daisy needed help, a lot of the time, getting up in the morning, or when she managed to clip her finger or crack her collarbone. It just wasn’t a workable solution for Daisy to move out and live on her own.

Sometimes she resented that, too, and Phil and Melinda for everything that they represented.

“July second,” the woman on the phone said, firmly. “You were born on July second, just after sunset. Eight-thirty, or so.”

Daisy’s fingers tightened around the pen and she scribbled a few notes, _Jul 2. 8:30p?_ before turning her attention back to the phone.

“How do you know that, Miss Jiaying?”

“I know a lot about you,” the woman said. “You should be very careful, Miss Johnson.”

“Was that a threat?” Daisy demanded. “Are you _threatening_ me?”

The line went dead.                                                                                                                           

_What the hell was that about?_

“Is who threatening you?” Cal called from his office. Daisy hadn’t raised her voice, she was sure of that, but Cal could also smell interesting gossip a mile away.

“I don’t know,” Daisy said. “She didn’t give me her whole name or anything. Wanted to know when my birthday was.”

“I hope you didn’t tell her, sounds like a phishing scam.”

“No, I didn’t,” Daisy said. She lightly touched the phone in its cradle, like it was a feral animal that might her, or might be calmed.

“Smart girl,” Cal said.

“Thanks,” Daisy said. “I think she called a few times this morning, too.”

“Well, if it keeps up, I’ll get someone to look into blocking the number,” Cal said. Daisy gave him a smile. She liked Cal; despite everything that people said about him, the man looked out for her. Made her feel… well, safe, somehow.


	7. Chapter 7

“Yeah, I know, it’s okay,” a soothing voice said. “Yeah, I know, you’re still a little shy, but it’s okay. I wouldn’t hurt you, you know that, right? You remember that, huh? Yeah, you remember--”

Robbie rounded the elbow turn in the long stable, hesitated. The soothing voice was _Daisy_ , and he’d gotten some very particular instructions about Daisy and what Daisy was and was not allowed to do.

The problem was, Robbie’d already figured out that Daisy was going to do whatever the hell she wanted.

The other problem was, what was he supposed to do now?

He couldn’t barge in while she was in the stall with Lucy. That could spook the horse, and a spooked horse inside a small stall was a danger to whoever was in the stall with her. A double danger to Daisy, whose brittle bones could easily be snapped by a wild animal.

Robbie had a sudden, vivid recollection of Gabe in the hospital, covered with bandages, while a sober and serious doctor told Uncle Eli that it was unlikely that Gabe would ever walk again, _we can’t know for sure until he wakes up, but we’re not getting promising nerve response from his lower extremities…_

_“Hey, at least it doesn’t hurt,” Gabe had said, after Robbie helped prop him up in the hospital bed, “like that’s good, right?” Without realizing how very, very bad it was._

_Gabe screaming when he realized that he was never going to walk again, screaming and cursing God and fate. And then he’d gone very, very quiet. Terrifyingly quiet. His eyes went big and round, but he didn’t talk. He barely said a word for several days._

_“He’s processing,” the doctor had said. “It’s a rough transition, and you may see more anger, later. Grief. I’d advise getting him into some therapy.”_

_Gabe had, point blank, refused to cooperate with the therapy, and Uncle Eli had fussed and worried about the cost, so… that hadn’t gone well at all._

Robbie shook himself out of his daze.

Theoretically, he could go back to the mobile vet’s office and tell Simmons that Daisy was in Lucy’s stall. On the other hand, Robbie’d been accused of being a ghost before, walking so silently that no one heard him. Maybe Daisy hadn’t heard him approach and thought she was safe. That she’d slip away as soon as Simmons came into the stable.

She’d still be in trouble. Both Fitz and Simmons had been clear on that, Daisy was not supposed to be anywhere near Lucy, not until they were more certain that the mare was soothed. And maybe never.

 _It’s a labor of love,_ Simmons had told him. _She loves that mare._

Lucy whickered. Robbie’d been standing there, stuck in indecisiveness, long enough that the scent of the cut apples he had drifted down to her stall. Robbie was not above bribery.

“What’s that, Luce?” Daisy wondered. Robbie could hear her shifting around in the stall, feet rustling the clean straw. The latch for the stall opened and-- “Oh.”

Robbie gave her a quick smile, ducking his chin. It was hard to look at her, because every time he saw her, he wanted to look _more_. She was pretty, that much was true, and fragile. And elegant in her careful way of walking.

But more than that; Robbie sensed a deep core of stubbornness in her. This was a woman who wouldn’t -- maybe even couldn’t -- back down. Daisy was not a quitter. Look at her situation with the ex; even when she should quit on something (or someone) she was reluctant to give up.

A lot of people would have given up on Lucy.

Robbie wasn’t sure if it was an admirable trait, or a stupid one. Sometimes, you just had to walk away.

But not today.

“Hey there, girl,” Robbie said, absently giving Daisy the same, soothing voice that she’d given the horse, like someone he didn’t want to startle. He rolled his tongue around in his mouth a little before grinning at her. “Seems I heard someone wasn’t supposed to be within arm’s reach of that hellbeast.”

“She’s not a _beast--_ ” Daisy started, hotly, before realizing that Robbie was teasing her. “Are you gonna snitch on me?”

“Me, girl?” Robbie spread his hands wide, the bucket of brushes dragging against his wrist as he gestured. “I’m not a snitch.”

“Thanks,” Daisy said, almost reluctant, as if she wasn’t used to people doing her favors.

“Look, I brought some apples to try to bribe her highness into letting me do some grooming,” Robbie offered. “If uh, if you want, you can feed them to her outside the stall while I give her a brushing?”

“Still trying to keep me in my little glass prison,” Daisy sighed.

“No way, girl,” Robbie said. “Trying to get you _paroled_.”

Daisy’s expression went soft, her eyes wide, and her mouth curved into a lovely smile. “Give me the apples,” she demanded.

***

“This is no’ ever gonna work,” Fitz said, throwing the aluminum racing plate across the room. It hit the wall, sounding almost exactly the same as a tin can, and clattered to the floor.

“What’s never going to work?” Daisy bent and picked up the plate -- similar to a horse shoe in purpose, to protect the hoof, but made of aluminum to reduce weight on a racehorse. The plates were for the front hooves, the back shoes slightly different and called caulks. Fitz had an assortment of them on his work table.

“I’m tryin’ ta make a glue that’ll fit the plates, just long enough for the race,” Fitz said. “Maybe last ten days, for need, but th’ glue that’ll hold, won’t come off again, an’ everything else I try comes off soon as it get wet, practically.”

“Well, why would you want to?” Daisy wondered. “There’s no glue on the planet you could make that’s going to be cheaper than eight horseshoe nails.” There were commercially available glues for horseshoes; some of them worked, some of them came right off. Some of them wouldn’t come off at all. For most horses, it wasn’t a big deal. For racehorses, anything that happened to the shoe mid-race could be the difference between winning and losing.

“Lucy’s go’ a quarter crack on two hooves,” Fitz told her. “But I was thinking, if we could glue on th’ shoes and then jus pop ‘em off when we were done with ‘em, like ladies pop off those acrylic fingernails? That’d be so much better for long term wear and tear. I’ll get it, I’ll get it one day.”

“If you were talking about anything other than horseshoes, I might think you were going all mad scientist on me,” Daisy told him.

“Angry. _Angry_ scientist,” Fitz said.

“You’re thinking about this for Lucy?” Daisy spun the shoe around on her finger, getting up enough momentum to flip it when she hit the open end, catching it again delicately on her extended index finger.

“Her hooves are in bad shape,” Fitz said. “Lazy stablehands and hard training, they’re soft. I don’t know if it’s any good trying to put shoes back on her. You may have t’ face the possibility that she’ll ne’er race again.”

“Well, if that happens, that happens,” Daisy said. “She’s more than just a racer, she’s a friend. She’s family, Fitz. We couldn’t just _leave_ her there.”

“I’m not saying you should have. No one who mistreats an animal like that should have ‘em. I jus’ want you to check your expectations. I know you think she’ll run a winner again.”

“We all have dreams,” Daisy said. She tossed the horseshoe up again. And caught it wrong, hitting just above the joint in her finger. She heard the sound of the bone cracking before she felt it, managed to control her expression enough to catch the shoe and place it gingerly on the table.  “Right now, I’m dreaming about lunch.” There, that sounded right, not like she was in pain, she could just--

Fitz looked at her, flat and unfooled. “Daisy.”

“Leeeeeo,” she whined back at him.

“Mr. Reyes,” Fitz said, and Daisy whirled, finding Robbie in the doorway to the vet’s lab. “If you’re finished with th’ barnwork for today, would you sit on Miss Daisy here a wee minute while I get a splint for her finger?”

Robbie’s eyes went right up. “Does he mean that literally, do you think, girl?”

Daisy found a chair, sat down, and patted her thighs. “Probably.”

Robbie was light, thin, like all riders were. He felt like a bag of bones settling across her legs, but also warm and light. He hooked an arm around the back of her neck to grab onto the chair, for balance.

There was something so comforting about his playful humor, his insistence on listening to everything Fitz said, and the tenderness with which he treated Lucy that made Daisy pay attention to him. Rather than feeling put upon (or sat upon in this case) she felt… like she was being gentled, the same way Lucy was being gentled.

An act of love for the horse.

And a kindness toward the owner’s bullheaded daughter.

She leaned against him, resting her forehead on Robbie’s shoulder. “This is oddly nice.”

“Best seat in the house,” Robbie teased.


	8. Chapter 8

Daisy really should have known it was too good to be true. Deleting Grant’s number out of her phone, ignoring his messages, that had been oddly liberating.

She’d been so grateful when he’d decided to move away; a job offering somewhere else, and she couldn’t go with him. Even if he’d asked -- which he didn’t. He’d hinted around it, waiting to see if she would ask if he wanted her to. But Daisy couldn’t have gone. There was no way she could ask Grant to pay for her health care, and she wouldn’t live without it.

Even with Fitz taking care of her various bone breaks and joint dislocations, her medication alone was a good portion of the income she made from working for Cal.

Her parents had her on their insurance for as long as they could, but then she had to get her own. Cal offered pretty good insurance, for what it was. Risking being unemployed for any length of time was a risk she wasn’t willing to take. She couldn’t put that burden on someone else.

So Grant had gone, and he’d left her behind. They hadn’t even played much with the idea of a long distance relationship. Grant had said he’d text her, but the first time she’d not answered a text in less than thirty minutes, he’d… just stopped.

It was, she thought, unrealistic of him to expect her to drop everything just to pay attention to him when he wasn’t even in the same damn state that she was in.

But it was too good to last, being free of Grant’s expectations.

Getting out of bed had been agony that morning. She wasn’t sure what she’d done; when Fitz got in, she’d see if she could get up long enough to get an xray done. Her chest ached, her back hurt. Sometimes she’d fractured ribs from coughing, and on one particularly notable occasion, she’d gotten a micro-fracture in her spine from sneezing.

She didn’t remember doing anything before bed, and if she’d done anything in her sleep aside from dreaming, she didn’t know about it.

“Cal,” she said, when she called. He didn’t answer, but the answering machine would get the note to him. “I can’t come in today.” Cal wouldn’t ask; he knew about her brittle bones, he knew about the pain she lived with. Another reason why she didn’t want to move; finding another town and having to start over, being a burden, getting sympathy instead of support. She couldn’t face the effort involved. At least the people around the ranch knew. They knew, and most of them didn’t ask how her day was going.

Some days were better than others, and some days were downright terrible. That day was off the charts awful. She considered just staying in bed all day, but not eating would just make things worse, later. She had to eat before she could take her medication. If she didn’t take her medication, she could kiss the entire week goodbye. At least.

She was cold, even though the sun was promising a nice, hot day. She tottered out of bed to fix breakfast. Something soft. Scrambled eggs and toast. She wasn’t sure her mouth could handle biting something. Not today.

Daisy almost walked into him before she noticed Grant Ward was in her damn kitchen.

She shrieked at the intruder and leaped backward, almost falling over one of the chairs, but Grant caught her in time. “Hey, there, easy,” he said, smiling at her in that fond, somewhat condescending way of his, the one that said she was a child who needed looking after.

“Grant, what the _hell_ are you doing here?”

“Oh, come on, don’t be like that,” Grant said. “I know you’re sore, but seriously, I’ve been trying to get in touch with you.”

“When someone doesn’t take your calls that means they don’t want to talk to you, not that they want you to break into their house,” Daisy spluttered. Her heart was going a mile a minute, she was still cold, and now she was angry.

“You’re being unreasonable,” Grant said. “I wanted to pay you back for bailing me out, and how am I supposed to pay you back if you won’t talk to me?”

Grant was… making good on a debt? What universe did she wake up in this morning. “You could have mailed me a check,” she said, crossly, not wanting to admit that maybe, maybe she was overreacting. Although him pointing out that she was _unreasonable_ didn’t help his case any.

“I think I deserve a chance, Daze,” Grant said, giving her his best puppy dog look. It was unfair, truly it was, that he was so damn attractive. Was it easier to be mad at people if they weren’t so easy on the eyes? Maybe.

“Haven’t you had as many chances as you deserve?” Daisy wondered. “And why do I have to be the one to give it to you? You left, you were done. We were done, Grant. I bailed you out from some misplaced sense of… I don’t know, lingering affection.”

“You still like me,” Grant said. “Look, I came all this way, and it’s not really my fault that you still leave your spare key behind the rock near the henhouse. So… I didn’t break in, either.”

“You weren’t given permission to use that key,” Daisy protested.

“Why are we doing this? I came to pay you back what I owe, not to get in a fight with you,” Grant said. He was being… very reasonable. Calm even.

Maybe she was being edgy, hostile for no reason. Daisy sat down in a chair. Her bones hurt too much to stand up even if they were going to stop arguing.

“Okay, Grant,” she said. “You can pay me back what you owe. Sorry.”

Grant gave her that wide, fond smile again. “There’s my girl,” he said, and Daisy didn’t want to be pleased that she’d made him happy. It was just relief, she decided, that they weren’t going to have to fight about this. “Look, here’s a check, it covers half what you paid out for me, and in another week or so, I can get you the rest. Things are starting to turn around for me, honey. Promise.”

“California not go so well,” Daisy surmised.

“Yeah, it was--” He was going to say more, but Daisy’s stomach complained. Loudly. “You… you don’t look so good, come to think of it. You having a bad day?”

Daisy nodded. “Yeah, I was gonna stay in bed all day, but I got hungry.” She was absolutely not going to think about how badly she’d have been scared if she had stayed in bed all day, and if Grant had decided to drop the check off in her bedroom. But Grant wouldn’t have hurt her, she knew that. Well, he didn’t mean to-- sometimes he was just a bit rough.

“Oh, I can make you some breakfast, if you want, just… you just sit there,” Grant said, like he was giving her permission for something she was already doing. “And let me do all the work.” Like she was incapable of making breakfast. He didn’t even ask her what she wanted, just set the kettle on the stove and started heating water for oatmeal.

She didn’t want oatmeal, she wanted eggs and toast.

But Grant was being nice, and he was trying to help. She peeked at the check that he’d written her. Almost half, ha. More like a little over a quarter of it. Cheapskate.

_You didn’t even expect to get any, what are you complaining about?_

She was too tired and in too much pain to figure it out. When she asked nicely if Grant could get her a glass of juice and her pills, he did it with a smile, and then gave her a bowl of oatmeal. Walnut raisin. Ug. Raisins were evil. And she didn’t like crunchy bits in things; her teeth weren’t in great shape either and having to be careful with every mouthful that she didn’t get a nut wedged in the wrong spot.

_He’s being nice to you, the least you could do is be grateful_ , she told herself.

“You’re quiet today,” Grant observed.

“Just tired, I guess,” she said. “I probably ought to just go back to bed.”

“Here, tell you what,” Grant said. “I’ll stay for the afternoon, just until your parents are back. In case you need anything. Don’t worry about me, I’ll watch television or something. You won’t even know I’m here at all.”

There was something wrong with that, Daisy thought, but between the pain medication and her general state of mind, she didn’t know what. “Yeah, yeah, okay, thanks, Grant.”


	9. Chapter 9

“That’s a girl,” Robbie said. Lucy didn’t seem inclined to bite his ear off, or stomp on his feet. She did push him up against the side of the stall, leaning her considerable weight against his chest and kept him pinned there for a while.

But that almost seemed affectionate, the horse version of a hug, and she tolerated him patting her shoulder while she did it.

Progress.

He gave her a last pat when she moved away and left the stall to fetch curries and brushes. Grooming was an important trust routine, as well as being good for the horse. Community grooming, like monkeys. Robbie grinned to himself.

The tack room was filled with saddles, bridles, smelled of glycerin soap.

Large rubber buckets, labeled with sharpie, held curry combs, picks for the underside of the horse’s hooves, dandy, body, and face brushes. He grabbed a kit bag, filling it with the supplies and then a handful of the tiny, “reject” apples that the orchards mostly threw away because people wouldn’t eat them. The horses, on the other hand, were crazy about them.

“All right, you want to look pretty, miss?”

Lucy whickered, sticking a velvety nose over the edge of her stall, and Robbie slipped her an apple. He was going to have to go after her teeth for a good cleaning, eventually, but at the moment, he didn’t want to do that. Even horses who hadn’t been beaten head-shy by a bad trainer, could be touchy about their teeth.

Lucy let him back into the stall.

Robbie offered her the grooming kit, each brush and pick, each item, for her inspection. She snuffled at the equipment, tried to bite the dandy brush. She threw it onto the straw floor, pawing at the ground.

“Yeah? You don’t like having your legs brushed? I think we’ll have to agree to disagree on that,” Robbie told her.

Curry first; a black rubber circle with a strap on the back; the inside were three circles of blunt teeth. He worked in small sections along Lucy’s back, scrubbing in round arcs, getting the loose hairs out, stimulating the horse’s skin, shaking free any fly mites or eggs that might have gotten into the mare’s coarse hair.

Horse hair flew in little clouds, and Lucy looked enormously fluffy by the time he was done with her off side. The near side, where a rider would mount on the left (a distant remnant of the time when soldiers would mount with a sword, and didn’t want to smack their mounts with the sheath), made her a little flinchy. Her skin rippled and she shied away from him.

Every time Lucy shied away, Robbie would offer her the brush. “See, this isn’t gonna hurt you, girl,” he said, soothing.

“You have a good, gentle hand with her,” Jemma observed. She held her hand out flat, offering Lucy a-- looked like an oatmeal cookie.

“Trying to bribe her into submission? She already likes me better, you’re too late,” Robbie teased.

“Good to know where I fall on the spectrum,” Jemma said. “Daisy’s not feeling well today, I don’t think. Why don’t you give a tap on the door after lunch and see if she needs anything.”

Robbie’s eyebrow went up. “What are you doing? She knows you better than me.”

“Daisy-- needs a friend,” Jemma said.

“Are you matchmaking?”

Jemma opened her mouth a few times, closed it again without saying anything. Finally-- “I just think she could use a wider circle of friends.”

“Is that what the cool kids are calling it these days?” He didn’t mind; unlike some of the blind dates the trailer park tias would set him up on, Jemma had Daisy’s best interests in mind, not Robbie’s.

“If you don’t find her company delightful--”

“I’ll go see if she wants lunch, or anything,” Robbie said, shaking his head.

“Good, you do that,” Jemma said, firmly.

That was a little odd, really, when Robbie went back to grooming. Jemma was meddling, there was no doubt about that, but there was an extra bit of fervor to it. If Daisy was ill, really ill, then wouldn’t someone have stayed home with her?

Of course, Shield was a working ranch, her parents would have been at their day’s duty.

Robbie couldn’t quite get the expression on Jemma’s face out of his mind, the way her forehead had a little wrunkle between her brows, and the way it smoothed out when Robbie said he’d go up to the house.

Finally, Robbie gave Lucy a wipe down with a lightly oiled cloth. She was as handsome and well groomed as she would get, at least for the day.

“All right, girl,” he said, “gonna go check on your mistress, see if she’s fallen down the well or something.” Robbie didn’t make a very good guardian angel, or a Lassie for that matter. But he was what was available.

Robbie didn’t bother to unpack the grooming kit; he’d need to wash all the brushes out. Save it for later.

He almost forgot his lunch bucket, and that would have made him look ridiculous, go up to share lunch with a sick girl and expect her to make him a sandwich? Idiot, he called himself.

The house wasn’t that far from the barn, but Daisy’s illness would have kept her house bound. When he got there, he rapped on the door a few times, with no answer, but the second time he knocked, the door opened up. Someone hadn’t closed it properly.

“Daisy?”

Robbie stuck his head into the mudroom; piles of shoes in boxes near the door, the washer and dryer with their loads of clothing. A basket on top of the dryer was empty. Robbie checked, looked like the washer load was done, and ready for a dry.

Might as well give a girl a hand, he decided.

Robbie washed his hands in the mudroom’s sink, put the dry clothes in the basket, and transferred the wet to the dryer.

He grabbed the laundry basket; if Daisy wasn’t up for lunch, he’d fold the laundry and leave it in the basket.

Robbie knew the basic layout of the house; it wasn’t too complicated, and his madre had been a maid in one of the uptown houses. They were all the same, really.

Movement from the office, a quiet shuffle of papers. Hah, maybe she was feeling better. “Hey gi-- the _fuck_ , man?”

That self-same asshole from the bar the other night, what had Daisy said his name was? Didn’t matter, that J. Crewe asshole was in Coulson’s office, thumbing through some files.

The guy jumped about two yards; he’d have gone further if there wasn’t a wall in the way; startled, and going all the way to hostile in a moment. A spray of photographs, mostly a younger Daisy’s collection of school pictures, one of her on horseback, another with her standing in front of a ribbon wall.

“What the actual fuck are you doing here, does Daisy--”

“Grant, wha--”

Daisy appeared in the hallway, wearing nothing but a long tee, her legs bare, and long and shapely, and it was really wrong of him to be noticing that at a time like the present. “Robbie?”

“This dick’s in your dad’s office, rummaging through his shit,” Robbie said, pointing, although his heart was sinking somewhere into his boots. She’d called out for Grant, she obviously knew he was here. Still, sleeping with the boss’s daughter was no excuse for stealing.

“What the fuck is he doing, sneaking around here like some sort of rapist?” Grant demanded, pointing an accusing finger at Robbie, and suddenly Robbie was wondering if Jemma had suspected that Grant was here. Sent him up to check up on Daisy, yeah, the hell?

Daisy lowered her face into her hands, the splint rings glittering along her fingers, a delicate contrast to the amber tones of her skin. “Can we stop with the yelling?” she asked, plaintive. “I feel like crap. What’s up, Robbie?”

“I came up to see if you wanted to have lunch with me,” Robbie said, baldly. “Jemma said you were feeling poorly-- and then this--”

“Why do you have my laundry basket?”

“Was going to fold it for you, give you a hand,” Robbie said.

Grant was pushing the photos into a pile, went to tuck them inside his jacket.

“Hey, what-- what are you--” Daisy moved into the office, hand outstretched to grab the pictures. Grant smacked out at her, knocking her hand aside and she hit the desk with the heel of her hand, hissing in sudden pain. “The hell!”

Robbie acted without thinking. The laundry went onto the floor like a scattering of snowdrifts. Within a breath, he had Grant pinned to the desk, arm wrenched up behind his back. “The lady asked you a question. What are you doing with those?”

“Look, I know,” Grant said, gritting his teeth. “It’s over with us, I know. I just… wanted something to remember you by.” He didn’t even look at Robbie, just gave Daisy an imploring stare.

Daisy twitched, still rubbing at her hand thoughtfully. “Let him go,” she said, and Robbie did, stepping back and letting his shoulder tense, just in case Grant was stupid enough to come up swinging. For a moment, Robbie thought he was going to, and even if it was perfectly justified, he was probably going to get fired if he got into a fistfight in the owner’s study.

“Go,” Daisy told the room and they both looked at her to determine which one she meant. Grant dodged around her, the photos still in his hand. A moment later, the door slammed.

Robbie pursed his lips, raised an eyebrow. "I could catch him, if you wanted to call the cops?"

“I just want him to go,” Daisy said, and she sounded frustrated and exhausted all at once. “I don’t want to fight again.”

“Again?”

Robbie held out his hand, palm up, and Daisy hesitated before laying her hand over his. The skin was already going red and swelling. “You think he broke this?”

Daisy shrugged, winced. Her face went through some amazing emotional acrobatics. “Probably,” she admitted. “Can we just… let it go today?”

“Today,” Robbie promised, because she needed help, not him going off chasing after her ex. “Let’s get you down to Fitz, he can--”

“I don’t think I can walk down to the barn. Not today.”

“I can carry you,” Robbie told her. He scooped the laundry back into the basket so he didn’t have to look at her if she winced about that, too.

It was probably just a sign of how much pain she was in that Daisy didn’t protest. “Okay.”

They were about halfway to the barn, Daisy a neat little package in his arms, when she said, “Thanks for helping. With, the laundry, and this… and Grant.” She said that last bit even lower, like she was worried that someone was listening.

“I’ll let it go today, girlfriend,” Robbie said, fervently. “But if I see him again--”

Daisy just bit her lip and didn’t argue.


	10. Chapter 10

Turned out Grant had, in fact, broken her wrist.

“Well, even on a normal person,” Fitz said with a sigh, “this is a tough break t’ heal up. The capitate bone is in the very center of the wrist.” He pointed to the films that he’d taken. “There’s only one little vessel that carries blood to this area, which means that healing is time consuming. Six weeks, at least. Immobile.”

“Fitz--”

Fitz raised a hand to stave off her protests. “It’s broken, Daisy. The only other thing you can hope ta do about it is surgery. Little bit of that composite organic polysaccharides goop in there, close the crack. But still, surgery requires time to heal, too. Four weeks recovery from surgery, and medical expenses, or six weeks in a cast. Tha’s your choice.”

“I couldn’t just--” Daisy started to complain but the look on Fitz’s face stopped her. “It’s really bad, isn’t it?”

“No’ as bad as it could have been,” Fitz said. “I can pu’ the cast on to just past your knuckles and you’ll have partial mobility. And we can leave your thumb out. I’ll get the 3D printer to fabricate it, it’ll even look nice. You can shower an’ everythin’. Wash your hair.”

Daisy sighed. There’d been a time, when she was a girl, where she couldn’t shower on her own, or even at all. She’d taken a tumble and broken her leg in four places, her arm in two, and the casts weren’t nearly as good as more modern ones.

Melinda had to bird-bathe her every few days, and while that would be more embarrassing as an adult, it hadn’t exactly been humiliation-free as a twelve year old, either.

“All right,” she said. Fitz nodded. It would take a while to fabricate the cast-- a few hours, and in the meanwhile she was sort of stuck doing nothing. Fitz had wrapped her wrist in a temporary but any actual chores would be right out.

Robbie hadn’t said anything the whole time, just standing there. It was strange, though, how his standing there seemed less fraught with meaning than when Grant just stood there. Like Robbie wasn’t waiting for her acknowledgement, just providing comfort.

“It’s good,” she said, just to hear herself talk. “The 3D cast, I mean. Old plaster stuff, that could do all sorts of crap to your skin, and it’s impossible to bathe in. I got sores one time that I broke my leg.” Daisy clamped her mouth shut, no one wanted to talk about how filthy and infected her skin had gotten, or how bad it itched and how doctors told her not to complain, it was fine… just to find out when they cut the damn thing off, that she’d had a very slight cut before the cast had gone on, which had gotten infected, and actually left scars. She put her hand lightly over the spot.

“Yeah?” Robbie said, as if he was actually interested. “My little brother, Gabe, he’s in a wheelchair, and we gotta take special care with his skin, make sure his clothes fit properly. Otherwise, he won’t feel it if his circulation gets cut off or anything.”

“Oh? What happened to him?” Daisy asked before she could even think not to. “If you don’t mind me asking, of course.”

“I don’t mind, girlfriend,” Robbie said.

She liked that he called her that; it was cute, and somehow not condescending like a lot of nicknames. Grant called her _baby_ all the time and she resented it. He could call her _girlfriend_ and she could call him _boyfriend_ and it didn’t seem like it meant anything, except that they were equals. Partners.

“Because, I’m not just being nosy, I mean, I am being nosy, but I’m also interested--”

“No one really knows what happened,” Robbie said. “Gabe… doesn’t remember. He had a head injury, too. You know, he was big into sports, kind of a dare devil and all, wild child. They -- some stablehands, you know -- found him in one of the paddocks. Head injury, out cold, he’d been stepped on by some of the horses. Broken back. He’s immobile from the waist down.”

“But he doesn’t remember anything? I mean, that’s good, because it sounds scary, but what was he doing in there in the first place?”

“Gabe doesn’t remember anything after school that afternoon,” Robbie said. He shook his head, and Daisy wasn’t sure if Robbie was just gesturing, or if he didn’t believe his brother. If Gabe had been doing something stupid, like trying to ride a green-broke horse, he might not have wanted to get in trouble. But really, how much more trouble could you get, with a broken back?

“Huh,” Daisy said. She vaguely remembered hearing about it, come to think-- “This was at Cal’s place, wasn’t it?”

“Yeah, which is nowhere that Gabe ever should have been.” Robbie paused, went to say something else, and his phone buzzed. He tugged it out of his pocket and checked it. “Crap. That’s Gabe now. The axle broke on his wheelchair, he needs a ride.”

“I have a truck,” Daisy volunteered.

“You can’t drive right now, girl--”

“But you can. I can’t do anything until Fitz gets the cast made. And we all won’t fit in your hot rod. So, let’s take my truck, I can meet your brother, and you can make sure I don’t do anything stupid while waiting for you to get back.”

***

The axle on Gabe’s wheelchair was, indeed, broken, but it didn’t look anything like an accident. It more looked like someone had been standing, and perhaps jumping on it. The seat canvas was torn, too, but that might just have been the pressure.

Gabe looked a little less than in great shape, too, filthy and his cheek and chin were scraped.

“What happened?”

“I just fell, Robbie, okay?” Gabe had that stubborn set to his mouth, he wasn’t going to snitch on whoever pushed him and broke his wheelchair.

Not that it mattered, much. Even if Gabe told, it wasn’t like he could go to the cops and do anything other than cause trouble. The gang -- whoever they were -- would back each other up, and if there weren’t any neutral witnesses, and it seemed like, with bullying, there never were, the cops couldn’t do anything.

Even if they wanted to. Which often, they really didn’t.

But it might have been nice to know who to pick a fight with, next time.

“Come on, Robbie, just… it’s fine, okay? I didn’t want to go all the way to the ramp, so I tried going over the sidewalk.”

Daisy, who so far hadn’t said anything beyond hi, looked around, curious. “And you got your chair all the way back here by yourself? That’s pretty impressive.”

“Who are you again?”

“Daisy Johnson,” Daisy said. She offered Gabe her hand in its cast. “And I know all about not wanting the people you care about to worry about you, so your secret’s safe with me.”

“I don’t have any secrets,” Gabe insisted and his eyes flitted from Daisy to Robbie and back, a little frantic. So, the kid did have some secrets. Not that he was going to spill them to Robbie, especially not to some strange girl that he just met. “Didn’t I see you the other week?”

“Yeah, my ex called me at fuck o’clock in the morning to come bail him out,” Daisy admitted, and there was a flash of triumph on Gabe’s face for having successfully changed the subject. “It’s the last favor I’m going to do for that guy, though.”

“Yeah, how are you doing that?”

“Badly, to be fair,” she said. Daisy tipped the wheelchair and looked under it. “You know, I know a bit about welding, and we’ve got a full blacksmithing rig back at the ranch. I bet I could fix this-- My dad, Phil, he did go-kart racing when he was younger, so if I can’t, bet he can.” She scowled at the wheelchair, like its cheap, second-hand nature offended her in some way.

“Yeah, can he put an engine on it, that’d be super cool,” Gabe said. “I kinda miss being able to go fast.”

“You couldn’t go fast even before you had a chair. Slowest outfielder in history,” Robbie teased.

“You don’t need to run fast if you can hit far,” Gabe said.

“So, like here’s the thing,” Daisy said. She was texting furiously, thumbs moving nimbly over the screen. “We might actually be able to put a go-kart engine on this, or you know, make you a special cart, but--”

“There’s always a butt coming,” Gabe muttered.

“Well, an electric wheelchair is expensive, and if you’ve already got people knocking over your stuff and generally being mean, we don’t want to just give it to them, might as well gift wrap it.”

“It shouldn’t be happening in the first place, none of it should,” Robbie burst. “Why do people have to bully a kid in a wheelchair?”

“You can’t fight my fights for me, hermano,” Gabe said. He eyed Daisy. “So, what have you got in mind?”

“You come on out to the ranch, let us fit you up with a hot rod chair, and you can use it on the ranch? At least until we get this bully problem fixed up,” Daisy said. She looked up at Robbie, “you know, if that’s okay with your brother?”

“Robbie, can we, please, yeah, we can do that, it’s cool--”

“We’re not your charity case, girlfriend,” Robbie said, because he felt like he needed to put up some sort of protest. They’d already given him a job, more just seemed like pushing it.

“Exchange of favors,” Daisy said. “You’re helping me with Grant, I’m helping your brother. It’s all fair, comes out in the wash, right?”

Robbie chewed his lip. On the one hand, charity burned. On the other, well, if Gabe was going out to the Shield ranch to play go-carts, he wasn’t going to be on the streets between school and home. He’d be someplace safe, having fun, where Robbie could keep an eye on him.

“Hey, Robbie.” A slender brown hand came down on Robbie’s arm. “You’re not still beating yourself up about this, right?”

“What’s that?” Daisy asked.

“Robbie blames himself, so the-- this,” Gabe said. “It wasn’t your fault.”

“How do you know, you don’t even remember it--”

“I know enough,” Gabe said. “I went to the barn. Don’t remember why, but… you wouldn’t have been able to talk me out of it.”

“So, okay. Dad’s headed back to the shop, he’ll meet us there in about an hour. You know, if you want to. If nothing else, let me get this chair fixed for you, so you still have your mobility aids. I don’t know how you feel about yours, I personally hated mine for a long time, but we got them all jazzed up and pretty, and I feel better about them now. We could do some decorations. I got all kinds of washi tape and spray paint.”

“Yeah, that… that sounds fun, right Gabe?”

“Yeah, it’ll be good,” Gabe agreed.

Daisy just beamed at both of them, her smile brightening up the day. Robbie couldn’t help staring at her, his heart squeezing a little under his ribs. And then--

_Oh. Oh, shit._


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter Warnings: A little bit of conversation about being a POC adopted by a white/mixed couple, and some of Daisy being stubborn about her chronic pain.

“Hey Phil,” Daisy chirped, trying for cheerful as they walked into the shop. Robbie was carrying Gabe like a backpack and Daisy had hauled the broken chair into Phil’s workshop. She noticed, but decided to pretend that she didn’t, the way Phil’s eyes tightened just a little bit.

Her adopted parents had never mandated that she call them Mom and Dad, but she had. For a long time, she had. And while she’d always known she was adopted, she hadn’t really given much thought to what that meant until she was twelve.

Strangely enough, it hadn’t even started with her.

It had started with a classmate. Who was also adopted. An overseas baby -- from Korea -- and he had opinions about adoption, particularly white families who went in, let their wars and their capitalist freedoms mess with other countries, no concerns as to who else was getting hurt as long as they got their oil, or kept their idealism.

“I was adopted by some white couple because they could just _buy_ me,” he would say. “And I don’t know anything about where I come from, or who I am, or what I could have been. Saving these poor orphans, bullshit. They’re the ones that made me an orphan to start with.”

Daisy was a teenager, she was young, she was angry with her parents for existing and for not being able to fix everything.

When she’d asked about her parents, she’d gotten the completely honest answer of, “we don’t know, it was a closed adoption.”

But she hadn’t wanted to hear it, and after a bad fight with Phil and Melinda about something entirely unrelated, she started calling them Phil and Melinda.

Phil had never insisted, or gotten angry.

He had, once, when she was sixteen, sat her down to talk to her about it, and that he considered himself as her father, and that any time she wanted to switch back, she could, and he wouldn’t make her feel awkward about it.

But by that time, it was habit.

Sometimes she remembered and said Dad, and sometimes she _forgot_ and said Dad.

But she always noticed when she forgot and said Phil. Because Phil tried to stifle that look of heartbreak and never quite succeeded.

To make up for that bit of thoughtlessness without drawing attention to it -- or apologizing, because she didn’t want to do that, either, for reasons that never quite made sense to her logically -- she hugged her dad and stayed hanging around his neck, like she was a baby koala. “So, these are my new friends, Robbie and Gabe Reyes.”

“You’re making friends with the staff?” Phil said, eyebrow going up and his mouth quirking in that sardonic way of his. “What will the neighbors think?”

“That we’re normal people, just like everyone else?” Daisy suggested. “Don’t mind him, he thinks he’s funny.”

“I’m hilarious,” Phil said. He offered Robbie a nod and shook Gabe’s hand. Jokes aside, meeting them as people instead of _employees_ had a significance.

“Just not today,” Daisy agreed amiably.

“Underappreciated in my time,” Phil bemoaned. “So, if you wanna just hop over here and have a seat, I’ll take a look at your chair.”

Carefully, Robbie put Gabe down in the car that Phil had indicated. Lola. Huh. A convertible, Phil had the top down and the door open, so it was just like a normal seat, or as normal as you could get in a workshop-slash-garage, but

“Wow,” Daisy said. “Usually he doesn’t let people touch Lola.”

“I’m attached to my car,” Phil said, “but I’ve seen your brother’s, so I think we understand each other.”

“Don’t damage the car or you’ll skin me, got it,” Gabe said.

“Smart kid.”

Just like that, everyone was friends. Robbie took a deep breath, relaxed. She could practically see the tension moving out of his neck and shoulders. For some reason, the release of stress made Robbie seem younger. He was young, Daisy thought. Probably not yet twenty-five, although she’d never asked.

Daisy gave Phil an extra squeeze, then watched as Robbie climbed onto one of Phil’s workstools, his jeans clinging exquisitely to well-muscled rider’s thighs. Daisy swallowed, mouth suddenly dry as she watched him.

“So, yeah, this is fucked up--” she glanced at Phil to see if he was going to make an issue of her swearing, but he didn’t do that either. She struggled to flip the chair. An older, cheaper model, it weighed a lot and it was awkward, but Phil let her do it on her own, which she appreciated more than she could say.

Honestly, Phil deserved her to be a little more self-aware.

“So I see,” he said. “Shouldn’t take long to fix though. This is good metal, not that cheap mix. A little time with the acetylene torch, she’ll be good as new.”

“Better than new. Let me get my kit.” On the far side of the room, she had a clip-top plastic storage case with stickers and spray paints and stencils. She even had stickers that looked like racing flames. “We can start with the leathers and wheels while Dad fixes that axle.”

“Thanks, Daisy. Mr. Coulson. I really appreciate this,” Gabe said, leaning forward enough that she was mildly concerned that he’d spill out of the car. But Gabe had a strong grip, and good balance. He was also tougher than he looked; probably tougher than his brother was letting him prove, and using his arms, he climbed out of the car and scooted over to where Daisy was digging through her things. He shot a quick, triumphant glance at Robbie when no one stopped him, or offered to assist.

 _Let her ask for help if she needs it, Phil._ Melinda’s voice came back to her. She hated asking for help, hated being thought of as weak and sickly. Even if she was. _Especially_ when she was.

It was part of love, she decided, watching Robbie as he watched his brother. The people who love him want to help. It’s not a burden. She smiled down at the teen boy. “So, I have kitten stickers--” Gabe made a face. “And some flames, and… oh, look, snakes and skulls.”

“I’ll go for the snakes and skulls,” Gabe said. And then took a kitten sticker anyway, affixing it to his shirt like a name tag. “And for today, a kitten. In like, solidarity for your ugly-ass crutches.”

“You haven’t even seen my ugly-ass crutches,” Daisy said, joking about her aids the way she never had before.

“Don’t gotta,” Gabe said. “I bet they’re all fluffy. Not cool.”

“ _Fluffy_ ,” Daisy agreed. “And a hundred and ten percent cool.”

***

Gabe couldn’t shut up about Daisy for the entire ride home. Or when he wasn’t talking about Daisy, he was crowing about his new decked out chair. Or how cool Phil Coulson was, working with heated metal like that, building a go-kart wheelchair, just for the challenge of the project, and that Gabe would get to benefit from it, that was just cinnamon on the churro. So to speak.

Like a real kid, Robbie thought, and then scolded himself for ableist thinking. Of course Gabe was a real kid, of course he wanted to do kid things. They kept telling Gabe that his life hadn’t ended just because he ended up in the chair.

And it was that just that was the painful part, like just, only, barely. A little bit broken. Only half of him wasn’t working anymore, he was half good.

 _Gabe isn’t a car that you crashed, asshole_ , Robbie chided himself, but it didn’t do any good. He still looked at his brother and saw a kid whose future had been cut and shaped to a narrow box.

 _Stephen Hawking spent his whole life in a wheelchair,_ Robbie reminded him _, and look at everything he did._

Robbie let out his breath with a long sigh, trying to keep up with the conversation. He moved on from Daisy and Coulson to the blacksmith shop, to some of the horses they’d seen, to wondering if it would be possible to ride a horse, now that his back was broken, did Robbie think a saddle could be rigged up for him?

“Oh, yeah, probably,” Robbie said. “But we don’t have a horse, shortstuff. Which makes it a little difficult.” Robbie had his own saddle; he’d be reworking it soon to fit the back of whatever race-horse he was going to seat. Lucy, if they could get her regentled in time. Maybe Coulson had a different runner, if-- “Yeah, yeah, sure.”

“I knew it!” Gabe crowed.

“Wait, what?” What had they been talking about that had Gabe so excited, while Robbie was woolgathering on races he may or may not sit for.

“You think she’s cute.”

“Lucy?”

“No, idiot, the girl,” Gabe said. “Daisy. You couldn’t take your damn eyes off her.”

“Yeah, my choices are look at a balding old dude, you, or a girl, of course I’m looking at her,” Robbie said, even though his heart was pounding more than it should. Enough that he felt it in his throat, his ears.

“No, you _like_ her,” Gabe opined.

“She’s okay.”

“I think if you actually didn’t like her, you’d say so,” Gabe said. “Which means you do. You like her like her.”

“What is this, fifth grade?”

“You gonna ask her out?”

“She’s my boss’s daughter,” Robbie protested. “Besides, she just got out of a crappy relationship. If I ask her out now, she’s going to think I’m one of those damn vultures who go around preying on girls that are lonely.”

“So, you do like her,” Gabe circled around to that again. Because he was a little shit.

“Yeah, okay, mamasita is pretty,” Robbie said. “Out of my league.”

“Not at all,” Gabe reassured him. “She was looking back. Why do you think she’s being so nice to me?”

“Uh, because you’re a cool kid and she’s a nice lady?”

“And she likes you,” Gabe said. “What you need, hermano, is a plan. Gotta be smooth. Gotta be suave. Gotta have moves.”

“If you say something about that damn shoulder touch, I will put skim milk in your cereal,” Robbie threatened.

“No, that’s Uncle Eli, not me.”

“I don’t need a plan, because I’m not going to ask my boss’s daughter on a date,” Robbie insisted.

“But I have a plan,” Gabe said, just tossing that out like some sort of conversation grenade.

Robbie got most of the way home before he turned to his brother. “What’s the plan?” 


	12. Chapter 12

The day was cloudy, the wind high.

For reasons that Daisy never could explain, windy, rainy days made her feel a little more alive. Something about a day when people didn’t look up, didn’t see her, were just in a hurry to get where they were going, those were good days.

Cal had a gazebo outside the office building.

Ostensibly it was for smokers, so they could comply with the law about smoking more than twenty feet away from the front door, but no one enforced it, and so Daisy mostly walked past the gauntlet of choking smoke.

But that did mean that the gazebo didn’t stink of smoke and usually was unoccupied.

There was a man-made pond by the building, with a little water fountain in it. Some ducks and a few turtles that made their home there. A little bit of the back-east, Cal called it.

Daisy liked to eat her lunch there, when she could manage the walk. It wasn’t a hike, by anyone’s standards except her own. But at least half the days she worked, she couldn’t make it out there. Or knew she could make it out there, but wouldn’t be able to make it back, and she’d have rather shot herself in the foot than ask Cal to come out and carry her back to the office. Probably because she knew he would do it.

The ducks had long since learned she was a soft touch, and they came up, quacking and looking for a handout. There weren’t lots of fish in the pond -- if any, really. Cal would have had to keep it stocked, and that didn’t seem worth the effort, for what was essentially a hole dug in the ground. Just keeping it full of water was probably wasteful.

Daisy kept old frozen peas and cut up lettuce for the ducks -- bread crumbs weren’t good for them, long term, and they’d make for a moldy pond bottom, over time.

“It is a nice prospect,” a voice said, as Daisy threw another handful of peas for the ducks to argue over. She nearly jumped. She hadn’t known anyone was there. The weather should have kept any casual strollers away.

Not that people usually just walked around on Cal’s property.

“If you’re into rainy days and spoiled ducks, then yeah,” Daisy said. She glanced out of the corner of her eye to see a woman. She would have been handsome if it weren’t for the scarring on her face, a rough cheek that looked like someone had taken a cheese grater to it.

Road rash. Daisy had seen that before; sometimes from jockeys who took a bad fall, or motorcyclists. Usually she saw it on arms, or legs.

She didn’t stare.

The woman turned all the way to face her, and it was almost as if she wore a half-mask of scars. Like a real-life phantom of the opera.

“It’s nice to meet you,” the woman said. “Daisy Johnson.”

“Do-- I don’t--” Daisy spluttered, because she hadn’t told the woman her name. Of course, who else would she be, with her silver finger bracers and her walking cane. Most of the locals knew who worked for Cal and who didn’t.

“Jiaying,” the woman said.

“You called-- a few weeks ago,” Daisy said.

“Yes,” she replied.

There was a long, uncomfortable silence between them, and Daisy didn’t want to be the one to break it. That seemed like admitting that she was losing, or something. The silence stretched out like taffy, like it would go on forever as Daisy ate her sandwich, tossed more peas to the ducks. She wasn’t going to-- fuck, she absolutely was going to.

“You know me,” Daisy said. She didn’t ask it, there was no point in asking.

“Yes, I know you,” Jiaying said.

A terrible suspicion grew in Daisy’s mind. She returned her attention to the ducks. A crust of bread followed the last handful of peas. The ducks could have a treat today. Daisy wasn’t hungry anymore.

“You know me, too,” Jiaying suggested.

“You’re my… my birth mother,” Daisy said, dully. She’d imagined this moment a dozen times or more. What adopted child hadn’t? It had never gone like this, a woman just walking up to her and making an announcement.

“Yes.”

“I don’t need one of those,” Daisy said. “A mother. I have one.” Fierce anger burned, coiling around her spine and giving her strength.

“Yes,” Jiaying said. That was a fact, and perhaps Jiaying knew it.

“So, what do you want?”

“Who gave you the name, _Johnson_?”

Daisy shrugged one shoulder. “Someone at the hospital, I guess. I had to have some last name, and they use Doe for corpses.”

“That’s true,” Jiaying said. “I would have thought Smith, maybe. Or you might have taken your new family’s name.”

“They’re not new,” Daisy said. “I’ve been Phil and Melinda’s daughter since I was born, practically. There was no _old_ family--”

“Then why keep the name Johnson, that belongs to no one?”

“Because it’s mine,” Daisy said. “Someone gave it to me, and it was the first gift I ever had. And it’s _mine_.”

“I named you Daisy. _Chuju_.” Jiaying said, digging in her bag. She pulled out a small, folded piece of paper with a set of Chinese characters on it and offered it to Daisy, who didn’t take it. After a few minutes of silent waiting, Jiaying put it back in her bag.

Daisy noticed she still hadn’t answered the question. What did her birth mother _want_ ; no one with a blind adoption, who used the safe harbor laws to keep from being identified, randomly wandered up to her child and introduced herself. Maybe Jiaying was dying and wanted some sort of closure.

If so, that was damned selfish of her, because Daisy didn’t have closure, that was for sure. Daisy had a whole lot of gaping wound right now. Or money. That seemed to motivate a lot of people to do things that they thought were done with.

She inspected her lunch box, as if there might be something else in it, aside from a few empty wrappers and crumbs.

Jiaying patted Daisy’s arm, very gently. “You, be good, take care of yourself.”

Like any mother would, Daisy suspected. “Do-- do I have any brothers or sisters?” Maybe Jiaying had a whole other family, somewhere else. People who might understand her, or not. It was hard to say. If they’d grown up with their mom, they might resent an interloper.

“No,” Jiaying said. “I never married.”

Well, like what did that have to do with anything? “Thanks for telling me,” Daisy said.

“So strange, you ending up here,” Jiaying said.

“I guess,” Daisy said. Where else was she supposed to go? Everything was very convenient for her parents to adopt her from the local hospital, without shipping a baby all the way around the country for someone else to adopt. And Daisy liked her home.

Would she like it, she wondered, if she’d grown up somewhere else?

Jiaying stood up, opened her mouth as if she was going to say something else, and then closed it again. Without taking her leave or giving Daisy any contact information or anything, she turned and walked away.

Daisy sat there for a while, watching her leave. Jiaying went out to the parking lot, got in a small, brown car that was more rusty than brown, and drove off. She didn’t wave. Or beep. Or even look back.

Daisy knew, because she watched the entire time.

Daisy watched the empty space for a little longer.

And then she pulled out her phone. Hesitated with her fingers over the screen. She probably should call her parents first. Instead, she hit the button for her boss.

“Daisy? Did you fall?”

“Cal, yeah, hi,” she said. “No, no, I’m I’m fine, just finished up having lunch. But...” She looked up, knowing that Cal knew where she ate lunch and waving to his window. She couldn’t see in, but somehow, she just knew he’d be looking. “See? I’m okay. Just… I got some unexpected news and I’d like to take a personal day for the rest of the afternoon?”

“Sure, sure,” Cal said, easy going as he always was with her. “We’re a little behind on those mailing lists, so if you could come in over the weekend, maybe, and finish them up-- what happened?”

When she looked back on things later, she didn’t know why she told him. It really wasn’t Cal’s business.

“Uh, my mother-- my birth mother,” Daisy said. “Contacted me.”

There was a long, practically pregnant pause. Something had changed, and Daisy didn’t know what. It wasn’t like everyone didn’t know she was adopted.

“I see,” he said. “Sure, go ahead. I’ll see you Saturday.”

“Absolutely, thank you,” Daisy told him, and then disconnected.

A moment later, she brought up her texts.

_You busy?_

New text from Reyes: _Not even. You need something?_

 _I think I need a friend. Buy you lunch, my treat._  



	13. Chapter 13

Robbie hadn’t really cared where the cafe was where Daisy wanted to eat, and walking into the little J-pop style tea room and macaron patisserie was somewhat jarring. The colors were all bright and cheerful and there was Babymetal playing in the background. Some of Robbie’s friends had mocked the teenage girls who sang death metal about chocolate, but Robbie didn’t much care. Whatever made people happy.

Daisy was already there with a plate full of assorted cookies in front of her and a cup of-- something she called matcha. 

“What’s your favorite flavoring?”

“Uh, chocolate mint?”

Daisy ordered for him, a frozen boba tea with chocolate mint. “It’s like the tea equivalent of a Starbucks frappe, really. There’s some tea involved, but it’s mostly covered up with sugar and flavoring. Do you like tapioca?”

“Rice pudding? Yeah, I mean, I guess.”

She nodded at a question the server put to her. “There. Hope you’ll like it.”

“How’d you even find this place?”

“Culture shopping,” Daisy said, and offered him the plate of little cookies. Robbie picked up a yellow one and discovered it was chewier than it looked with a cream filling. 

“Excuse?”

She held up a dark green cookie, considered it for a moment, took a bite. Chewed and chased it with a sip of tea.

“I knew I was at least half-Asian,” she said, “and my-- Melinda, my mom… my adopted mom-- she’s Chinese, but raised American. Obviously, Phil’s your typical midwestern white guy. So, you know, I’m raised American, and I don’t. I mean, you know how it is. You don’t really fit in. You’re always the token Asian -- or the token black girl. There’s rarely more than one of you in any group. Oh, sorry, we’re full up on girls of color, check with the next lunch table down the row.”

Robbie shrugged. “There’s quite a lot of Latinos in the park, where I live.”

“And they’re your friends whether you like them or not, because there’s really no one else,” Daisy said.

“Ah, some of the crew’s okay,” Robbie said. “But I get where you’re coming from, girl. Nothing like a human being to stuff people in boxes, right?”

“So, yeah-- I did this, and I went through a hard-core wouldn’t eat anything but Chinese food phase. And then I found out from Melinda’s mom that what I think of as Chinese food and what she makes are-- yeah, completely different things. Almost. I’m embarrassed to admit, I like my General Tso's chicken too much to give it up.”

“That’s not authentic Chinese?”

“Barely,” Daisy said. “It’s like pizza is nominally Italian, but not really.”

“So, did you find anything while you were looking for yourself?”

“I discovered a hell of a lot of racism,” Daisy said. “Especially with the whole white guys who love Asian women and are really just looking for a docile little wifu.” She took another bite of cookie. “But no. Today-- today, I had a breakthrough, and I thought I’d  _stopped_  looking.”

“Yeah? Hit me.”

“My biological mother dropped in on me,” Daisy said. 

“So, wow, that’s big,” Robbie told her. “Um. Do you want sympathy, encouragement, someone to rant at, or to just tell someone else so you don’t have to hold a secret, and we’ll talk about something else.”

Daisy stared at him like he’d just handed her a Publisher’s Clearing House check. One of the really big ones that was hard to balance and they used to pose for pictures.

“You’d do that?”

“Yes,” Robbie said. “But you have to tell me what you want, chica.”

“I just… wanted to say it out loud. To someone that I think might care,” Daisy said. The tea arrived and Robbie took a sluck out of his straw. The bubble part of bubble tea was apparently a thick layer of tapioca pearls that got stuck in the straw. It wasn’t… entirely terrible.

“Okay, then,” Robbie said. “Let me tell you about this stunt that Gabe pulled the other day--” and went on to regale her with Gabe’s high school antics that had involved tapping into the school’s PA system and blaring  _Hot for Teacher_  over the morning announcements.

Daisy was giggling, practically spitting her tea onto the plate of cookies. Gabe really had a way about him that even when he pulled off pranks, most people still liked him. Teachers, at least. That was better than Robbie. Not much of a student, really, was Robbie Reyes. Didn’t need to be. He was going to be a grand champion jockey.

“Yeah, you are,” Daisy said, and her eyes were so bright, and her mouth was so perfect. “You and Lucy are gonna do really great, I have a feeling.”

Robbie was just considering whether or not he could -- would be allowed to, would she even want him to -- kiss her, when her expression changed.

“Grant,” she said, by way of explanation. 

Robbie didn’t turn around, didn’t gawk at the ex-boyfriend. He did look around the cafe for reflective surfaces, and sure enough, there was a blurry, angry mass roughly shaped like a dickhead coming toward the cafe. “Too late to dodge him,” Robbie said. “You wanna go to the ladies, let me chase him off for you?”

“No fighting,” Daisy said, putting her hand on his wrist. “Text me when he’s gone.”

***

The bathroom smelled overwhelmingly like lilac, and the music was somewhat louder. There were even flushers on top of the toilets. That was one of the things Daisy had read about, where some cultures were so nervous about having actual bodily functions that women would flush before they urinated, to cover the sound, wasting serious amounts of water.

So the flusher imitated the sound, keeping water usage normal. 

She did actually pee (using the flusher, because why the hell not, it was there, right?) and washed her hands and checked her look in the mirror. Brushed out her hair and reapplied her lip liner.

For a moment, she’d actually thought Robbie might try for a kiss, and she’d still been trying to decide if she was going to let him. She kinda wanted to kiss him; he had an amazingly plush lower lip, and gorgeous, sharp cheekbones, and the little mustache thing he had going was trying really hard -- it wasn’t quite there yet, but she liked the boyish edge it gave to his face.

He was adorable and intense and-- that smile, and those eyes. “You are pathetic,” she told her reflection, but she touched up her blusher anyway. If he was going to kiss her, she absolutely was going to let him, and she wanted to look her best when she did.

She checked her phone; no text.

Which was sort of worrisome, but since she figured that the proprietor would start screaming if someone picked an actual fight, at least that probably wasn’t going on.

Tempted to move closer, to see if she could hear anything, Daisy pushed the door open carefully with tented fingers.

There was a hush of conversation, two men talking in serious, flat tones.

“-- oesn’t want to see you,” Robbie said. “You should go, dude. The stalker look is not attractive.”

“When did Daisy start lettin’ you speak for her? Is that some sort of machismo, Hispanic thing?” Grant responded.

“Every time you talk to her, you upset her,” Robbie told him. “So, she doesn’t need to talk to you anymore, because all she’s going to tell you is to get your ass in gear, and get it gone.”

She debated with herself about going out there, but even now, she’d lingered in the ladies’ room long enough that she’d have to explain it, that she was actually hiding from Grant, and while Robbie knew it, and she knew it, and  _Grant_ knew it, and probably the  _shop owner_  knew it, being forced to give an explanation, to explain herself, once again, to Grant fucking Ward, just made her tired.

The bells jangled over the door, and she peeked further out to watch Grant striding off. She’d missed it, whatever he’d said at the end there, too lost in her own thoughts to pay attention. It probably wasn’t important anyway.

“He’s gone?” She waited a little longer before coming back out.

“He’s gone,” Robbie said.


	14. Chapter 14

Robbie offered the brush to Lucy again, who sniffed at it, then snorted, blowing hot air through her nostrils. Shook out her mane, and went back to eating.

Trust; a horse that was nervous wouldn’t eat, it was too dangerous. Her lipping at the oat mash in the bottom of her feeding bucket was a good sign.

Robbie entered the stall, closed the gate behind him. The last several days running, he’d brought the tack in, leaving it on the sidewalls of the stall. He didn’t try to put it on her, just let her get used to it being around. The smell of it, the flash of light on the buckles.

She might never race again, but she might make a decent saddle mount. She might be able to tolerate breeding, again.

But he was kinda hoping for a racer.

Robbie wanted to race.

Somewhere in that equine soul, he thought maybe  _Lucy_  wanted to race.

Robbie groomed the horse, starting from her withers and going all the way down to the base of her tail. She was sleek and shiny and the last of her hoof damage was clearing up. She could bear a rider. If she wanted to.

Robbie stroked the short, stiff-bristled brush over her flawless flank, watching the skin judder as her muscles twitched. “Would you like that, girl,” he asked her. “To go for a run?”

Lucy flicked her ear at him. She heard him, but she wasn’t listening. That was good, Robbie thought. She didn’t see him a a threat. She didn’t see him as someone who was going to hurt her, as someone who had to be hurt first.

Robbie put the brush back in the carry-bucket. He plucked the bridle, a simple rubber snaffle-bit, off the peg and showed it to her.

Lucy didn’t flinch back, she didn’t shy away. She flicked her ear again, but then turned her head to face him. Interest.

“Wanna go out?”

Jemma was going to kill him; she wasn’t cleared for riding yet. At the best, Robbie could have taken her for a walk with a halter, leading her a few times around the ring.

“You don’t want that, do you girl? Boring. You’re better than that.”

Lucy nudged the leather and made a soft whickering noise. She nosed in her bucket again, lipping up the last bits of oats, but her ears were tracking Robbie like radar dishes.

“Yeah? I see you pretending you don’t want out,” Robbie teased her. He patted her shoulder with one hand and she raised her neck.

He offered her the bit, and she took it, sliding her tongue around the rubber until the bit was resting just behind her teeth.

Robbie slipped the leather straps over her ears, and she helped him along a little, stretching out her face so the straps fell the way they were supposed to. Here was a horse who’d once been eager to ride.

“Good girl,” Robbie whispered. “You’re so good, you’re such a good girl. I’m gonna take care of you, if you trust me.”

He buckled the throat latch, tucking the tag end into the brass buckle. She didn’t flinch, just blinked at him. The nose piece was hanging a little low, so he tightened the cheek piece.

“Good girl.”

He left the saddle where it was. He could mount up without a stirrup and if she was going to throw him, a clean fall was best. He did lay a blanket on her back.

Lucy snuffled at him, like she wasn’t sure what he was up to, and wasn’t positive she approved.

“Want to go out?” Robbie put his hand on the stall latch, twisted it up, and opened the door, letting it swing forward on silent hinges.

He kept the reins loose in one hand, and Lucy stepped out of the stall just at his shoulder. She stuck a velvety nose at his ear and whuffled. “Good girl,” Robbie said, as quiet as he could. He grabbed a brain bucket on his way past the tack room. He hadn’t worn a hard hat in weeks, but it felt good, snug around his ears. He snapped the chin in place. “You ready?”

She watched him placidly, working the bit with her teeth. Robbie faced her, got a handful of mane just above her withers, took a skipping step and threw himself onto her back, toes automatically curling around the barrel of her chest, thighs going tight to grip.

Her ears flicked backward at him, and then Lucy turned her neck all the way around to look at him, like  _hombre, what are you doing back there_?

Robbie gathered the reins in one hand, patted her shoulder. She hadn’t thrown him yet; she hadn’t even tensed like she was planning on it.

Well, what did he expect? Lucy’d been carrying a mount since she was a yearling. It wasn’t like the weight of Robbie’s slender form was too much of a burden.

And he’d proven to her, in the last months, that he was never going to hurt her.

She could trust him.

Lucy whickered, took a step forward, looked back at him.

“Good girl, that’s right,” Robbie said, not even tapping her side with his heels. Let her take the lead.

Another few steps.

“Excellent.” He shifted forward a little, preparing to dismount. No need to push his luck.

Lucy bounced forward, not quite a trot, but a smooth little quick shuffle. Unconsciously, Robbie leaned down, centering his balance, and Lucy took that for a signal to go faster. The shuffle became a trot. 

The trot became a canter. The canter lasted one turn around the ring and then she broke formation, went straight up the center of the ring, four distinct hoofbeats hitting the dusty ground.

“Fuck me,” Robbie said, and he clung tight to her mane with both hands as Lucy took the bit in her teeth, and jumped the fence.

Once she was on the other side, she turned in a lazy spiral, slowing down to a walk. She snorted again.

“Suppose you’re proud of yourself,” Robbie said as she stopped. Her ears were upright, twitching and flexing, but not panicked.

She snorted, like she was laughing.

“Yeah, good girl,” Robbie said, patting her shoulder. “But I suppose we shouldn’t do that again.” He dismounted, gathered up the reins. “Probably enough for one day?”

Lucy turned, pressed her face into Robbie’s chest and whickered.

The equine version of a hug, like a cat, rubbing for attention.

Robbie couldn’t speak around the sudden lump in his throat, just patted her neck.  _Good girl._

***

Daisy was barely breathing, watching the ring from the upper window. Robbie was bareback, only a rubber bit and a penchant for landing on his feet between himself and a possible broken neck. 

She was practically chewing her fingernails off, screeching in terror, yelling in triumph. Lucy was doing it. She was  _doing it_. 

Daisy didn’t dare run out to congratulate him and risk spooking the mare. She didn’t dare do anything. Oh, Fitz and Simmons were going to have absolute kittens. Riding wasn’t on the plan, it wasn’t on the schedule, but Robbie was like Daisy in that regard. Schedules didn’t matter, plans didn’t matter, it was what was in the heart that mattered.

_It’s the heart that matters most..._

She waited, phone in her hand to call an ambulance if she needed to, until Robbie dismounted, lead the horse back into the barn.

“Yes, yes yes!” Daisy jumped around her room -- carefully, it wouldn’t do to take a fall and get injured from something as wonderful as celebrating -- screaming joy. Then, unable to contain her excitement any longer, she dashed down the stairs.  _Champagne_ , surely she had some, and -- oh, that was an idea.

Daisy opened a bottom cupboard and pulled out the picnic basket. 

In short order she made up a handful of sandwiches; roast beef, chicken, and egg salad. Tossed a few bags of chips and some cold soda. Two plastic glasses for the champagne. A handful of mandarin oranges, some leftover slices of raspberry pie, and a blanket to spread on the ground.

She latched the basket and headed out to the barn.

Robbie was just shutting the stall gate when she got down there.

“Hey, girlfriend, it’s not--”

“It’s exactly what it looks like,” Daisy said. “I thought you might want to have a bit of a celebration picnic?”

“Yeah? Is this a date? ‘Cause it kinda sounds like a date?”

Daisy laughed, feeling her neck heat. “Yeah, boyfrien’,” she said, drawling out her words. “It’s a date.”

“So, we’re dating now?”

“Are we doing the DTR right now, in my parent’s barn?”

“You want to pencil me in an appointment?”

“Despite my ex-boyfriend issues, I think I’m relatively baggage free,” Daisy said. “I haven’t been dating in a while, I’m not seeing anyone else, and I’m not hung up on Grant Ward. So, that means, yes, I’m available for dating. I don’t have the energy for drama, so it’d be exclusive right now--”

“I’m not seeing anyone else,” Robbie told her. He deftly removed the picnic basket. “Did you have any idea where you want to go eat?”

“There’s a little table and stuff out near my mom’s flower garden, it’s pretty enough,” Daisy said. “If you’re okay with not going hiking or anything.”

“Still feeling a bit rough?”

“I want to have a nice date, and not break anything for a change.”

“Your mom’s garden sounds great,  _girlfriend_.” And this time there was stress on that word that Daisy hadn’t heard before. Really, she was almost thirty, she shouldn’t get freaking butterflies in her stomach from someone calling her girlfriend, but she did, and after a moment of feeling moderately Teen Beat magazine about it, she decided she’d just enjoy it. It’d been a while since she’d r eally enjoyed the company of someone else.

Robbie seemed to want and accept her for who she was; so far he hadn’t asked for anything she wasn’t willing and eager to give. Maybe it was okay to be excited about it.

“Does this whole boyfriend/girlfriend thing come with, you know, hand holding and kissing?”

Daisy laughed. “What are you, twelve?”

Robbie turned to look at her, very seriously. “I’ve seen how your ex treats you,” he said. “So I-- that’s not me, chica. I’m going to make sure you’re onboard and interested. If you don’t want me to hold your hand, I won’t.”

Well, that was new. Daisy raised an eyebrow, felt her lips purse. “Okay, so, no on the hand-holding, but you can put your arm around my shoulders, if you want, while we walk.”

“I can do that.”

She wormed her way into the crook of his arm, tucked right up against his side. It wouldn’t be comfortable long, the man put out a ton of body heat and it was hot as hell most of the time anyway, but for the moment, it was comforting and nice. Those butterflies in her stomach kicked it up a notch. “And we can talk about the kissing thing once we’re out of sight of the house.” She was an adult, but she wasn’t sure she wanted to answer questions about necking with the hired help.

Not just yet.

This was a secret thing between her and Robbie.


End file.
